PSYCHOLINGUISTIC “CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION DEVELOPMENT”

A.    Introduction

I observed my cousin’s son namely Kevin. He is 2,4 years old and very attractive child. He lives with his parents in Kec. Moramo. They are in one house with his grandfather and grandmother. His father’s name is Lodaris and his mother’s name is Nike. He is the first son and do not have younger brother or sister. His mother is a housewife and his father is a teacher at one of elementary school in Moramo. He lives in a society which is very friendly to their family. He also sometimes being brought to Kendari in my house on weekends. In his society, he also communicate with other baby, but sometimes there is trouble to them, sometimes they fight, so his mother always stay on his side. He also likes playing with my little brother when he come to my house. His mother always teach him to say words correctly when he is speaking although he can not, but his mother always train him. When his mother go somewhere, to the market for example, he is being kept by his grandmother. He can’t  drink ice or cool food and drinks. He never get serious injury before.

B.     SUPPORTING THEORIES

For fifty years, linguists Noam Chomsky and the late Eric Ingeberg have argued for the hypothesis that children have innate, language-specific abilities that facilitate and constrain language learning. Other researchers, including allow children to quickly figure out what is and isn't possible in the grammar of their native language, and allow them to master that grammar by the age of three. Nativists view language as a fundamental part of the human genome, as the trait that makes humans human, and its acquisition as a natural part of maturation, no different from dolphins learning to swim or songbirds learning to sing.

Chomsky originally theorized that children were born with a hard-wired language acquisition device (LAD) in their brains. He later expanded this idea into that of Universal Grammar, a set of innate principles and adjustable parameters that are common to all human languages. According to Chomsky, the presence of Universal Grammar in the brains of children allow them to deduce the structure of their native languages from "mere exposure".

Linguist Eric Englebert stated in 1964 that the crucial period of language acquisition ends around the age of 12 years. He claimed that if no language is learned before then (see Feral children), it could never be learned in a normal and fully functional sense. This was called the "Critical period hypothesis." However, the opponents of the "Critical Period Hypothesis" say that in this example the child is hardly growing up in a nurturing environment, and that the lack of language acquisition in later life may be due to the results of a generally abusive environment rather than being specifically due to a lack of exposure to language.

Theories of Language Acquisition

1)      Empiricism

This school is based on four theories or hypothesises. The stimulus theory, the correctness theory; trial and errors theory, and the imitation theory. The empiricists believe that the actual experience is the source of ideas. The mind is at first a “Tabula Rasa”, they believe that we have no special inborn capacity to acquire language. Language is entirely learnt through environmental stimulus and behavioural response. The empiricists believe that the child imitates the adult in speaking.

2)      Rationalism

The rationalists believe that the reason is the chief source of knowledge. They stress on the fact that children acquire language so readily because it is in their genes. They also believe that children are born with a capacity to acquire many languages.

Factors influence language acquisition

Determining factors

There is also considerable agreement that the course of language development reflects the interplay of factors in at least five domains: social, perceptual, cognitive processing, conceptual and linguistic. Theorists differ in the emphasis and degree of determination posited for a given domain, but most would agree that each is relevant.

Social

1.      Toddlers infer a speaker’s communicative intent and use that information to guide their language learning. For example, as early as 24 months, they are able to infer solely from an adult’s excited tone of voice and from the physical setting that a new word must refer to an object that has been placed on the table while the adult was away.10

2.      The verbal environment influences language learning. From ages one to three, children from highly verbal “professional” families heard nearly three times as many words per week as children from low verbal “welfare” families. Longitudinal data show that aspects of this early parental language predict language scores at age nine.11

Perceptual

1.      Infant perception sets the stage. Auditory perceptual skills at six or 12 months of age can predict vocabulary size and syntactic complexity at 23 months of age.12

2.      Perceptibility matters. In English, the forms that are challenging for impaired learners are forms with reduced perceptual salience, e.g. those that are unstressed or lie united within a consonant cluster.

Cognitive processes

1.      Frequency affects rate of learning. Children who hear an unusually high proportion of examples of a language form learn that form faster than children who receive ordinary input.14

2.      “Trade-offs” among the different domains of language can occur when the total targeted sentence requires more mental resources than the child has available. For example, children make more errors on small grammatical forms such as verb endings and prepositions in sentences with complex syntax than in sentences with simple syntax.15

Conceptual

1.      Relational terms are linked to mental age. Words that express notions of time, causality, location, size and order are correlated with mental age much more than words that simply refer to objects and events.16 Moreover, children learning different languages learn to talk about spatial locations such as in or next to in much the same order, regardless of the grammatical devices of their particular language.17

2.      Language skills are affected by world knowledge. Children who have difficulty recalling a word also know less about the objects to which the word refers.18

Linguistic

1.      Verb endings are cues to verb meaning. If a verb ends in –ing, three-year-olds will decide that it refers to an activity, such as swim, rather than to a completed change of state, such as push off.

2.      Current vocabulary influences new learning. Toddlers usually decide that a new word refers to the object for which they do not already have a label.

Left and Right Brain Functioning

Each hemisphere of the brain functions like two different personalities with their own way of processing information. The left brain thinks methodically and likes to organize and categorize information from the environment. It connects new information with old, making sense of our world.

This contrasts with the right brain which "thinks" holistically in pictures. The right learns kinesthetically through the body and functions with the present. It's the right brain that's responsible in counseling for bringing in our awareness to the present.

They are still debating which functions are governed by which hemisphere however generally speaking, each hemisphere dominates in the following ways:

Other Important Right Brain Functions

These are the important characteristics in therapy.

• Tone of voice
• Facial expression
• Gestures
• Posture
• Intensity of response
• Autobiographical Memory (remembering your Birthday, significant events)
• Map of the body (only on this side)
• Stress Management

The left brain connects our internal world to our external world giving us that feeling of being separate from one another. It's the left brain that gives us the sense of "I am".

The right brain is that part of our brain that connects us to each other. In counseling, it's the right brain that gives us the feeling that our therapist is attuned to us.

C.    METHODOLOGY

           

I started this observation by doing a direct method. I observed the child (kevin) about what he was doing in a day. And I took some notes about the words he said since I would like to list it in the result chapter. After that, I interviewed his mother (my cousin) about Kevin, like when did he start speaking? Who are his friends talking? How he talk in society (neighbourhood), etc.

            I will analize the data I got by concerning my observation about phonological and syntactical development of the child. Phonologycal is about his phoneme, how he pronounce it, what word he can’t produce well and what is his way to make the word to be understood by people around. Syntactical is about the sentence he said, wheter he use SVO pattern and what kind of sentence he produced. Also some funtional phrases, like command and expressing.

D.    DATA BASED ON OBSERVATION

Words:

Ma:m               : makan

Teh                  : tes

Eh                    : es

Tawat              : pesawat

Agi                  : lagi

Poto                 : foto

Dotel               : dokter

Mala                : marah

Bodo               : bodoh

Kepi                : kevin

Ibu                   : ibu

Ayah               : ayah

Kakena            : kakeknya

Mamana          : mamanya

Pelgi                : pergi

Tinggakan       : tinggalkan

Motol              : motor

Dudududu      : duduk-duduk

Ali                   : Ari

Bobo               : tidur

Num                : minum

Sentences:

Ali dudududu di motol, pelgi tinggakan mamana

ð  Ari duduk-duduk di motor, pergi tinggalkan mamanya.

E.     ANALYSIS

Phonologycal analysis

            Phonologycally, children on this stage still couldn’t pronounce the right pronounciation of some (almost all) words. It is because their speaking organs still not mature and need time to be mature or trained to be able to pronounce all phoneme.

            Kevin’s ability to say the words is also still lack. We can see many word he said like mamana (mamanya), pelgi (pergi), teh (tes), etc. From the data I got, i can conclude some points:

-          He still not can pronounce ‘r’, whenever ‘r’ is located, he can’t pronounce it correctly. He replace r with ‘l’ if the ‘r’ is at the end of the word, in the middle of the word with vowel before and after the ‘r’.

-          He can not pronouns ‘l’ if the alphabet is located before a consonant. He just ommits it.

-          He can’t pronounce ‘-nya’ and just replace it with ‘-na’

-          He can’t also pronounce ‘f’ and ‘v’. Just replace it with ‘p’.

-          He sometimes ommit one or two phoneme, like the word ‘pesawat’ he just say ‘tawat’ means that he ommit the phrases from three to two.

-          He replace ‘s’ with ‘h’ if the ‘s’ is located at the end of the word like in the word ‘eh’(es) and ‘teh’ (tes).

-          He can’t pronounce stressed alphabet such as ‘k’. He sometimes ommit it.

Morpholgycal analysis

            Kevin mostly said free morpheme, namely an independent morpheme which can stand without other morpheme. For instance, ma:m, bobo, pelgi, etc. But he also said some bound morpheme which is very simple, like tinggakan (tinggalkan), mamana (mamanya), kakena (kakeknya). He still not produce a very complex morpheme such as mempertanggungjawabkan, ketertinggalan, etc. This is because his brain capacity  still not reach this stage. He will be able to say those complex bound morpheme later if he study at school.

Syntactical analysis

            Then we talk about the sentence development of the children. I analyzed here the sentence he produce include the phrases. One of the complete sentence i heard from him is:

 Ali dudududu di motol, pelgi tinggakan mamana

ð  Ari duduk-duduk di motor, pergi tinggalkan mamanya.

From this sentence, Kevin can produce a SVO sentence and also complex sentence. But unfortunately he didn’t use conjunction in separating his complex sentence. From saying the sentence, I can conclude that his brain is functioning well and he can understand the situation he face. In other situation, he asked me to take a picture of him by using my handphone. He said ‘Poto kepi’ (foto kevin). This is a command sentence. In this case, I can see that he able to use this kind of sentence on this stage. He also said ‘o ma:m’ (mau makan). He can express his feeling and what he wanted to do.

Conclusion

On this stage, children aged 2 or 3 years old still can not pronounce some alphabet and they try it by replacing or ommiting the alphabet. This is because their speaking aparatus is still not mature. They also need training from their parents. Parents should be always try to understand what they said if they still can’t pronounce it well in order to correct them. This is important to maks their language develops to be better from stage to stage. Parents also should understand that they are in their acquisition period so parents should pay attention to their development and the environtment since it influences the development very much.