The Four Stages of Language Acquisition
Language is part of the environment that exists before a child is born and is one that a child is born into. First language acquisition refers to the skills a child develops to speak the language of its environment, whether native or not.
Prelinguistic Stage of Babbling and Cooing
This stage ranges from the birth of a child to 6 months of age. The noises produced by babies at this age include whimpering, crying, and cooing. These sounds may not be considered language because they primarily respond to certain stimuli. These noises do not fit the definition of language; they occur before a child produces language. Therefore, that is why it is called the prelinguistic stage.
The baby’s toughness fills the mouth, and their systematic contractions shove them in and out and up and down. These contractions, therefore, account for the cooing. However, development occurs during this stage. Research says that at about two months old, babies start cooing voluntarily, contrary to when they do so involuntarily (Budiharso, 2019).
Infants do not seem to attach meaning to any of the coo sounds they produce, even though they can notice them. For instance, when an infant is breastfed, their sucking pattern is presented by a phonetic distinction in sound (Yang, 2018). They might alter the patterns, which means they are aware that they produce a sound.
Holophrastic Stage of One-Word Utterances
Holographic stage of One-word Utterances starts at about a year old and continues to at least two years old. The utterances produced by the child are similar to a word pattern. Babbling may overlap the first words, which means that the first words often show the structure of babbled syllables (Budiharso, 2019). As the stage progresses, the children continue to produce utterances similar to words. They correspond to the language in their environment. These alterations become more accessible, and sounds are added until a vocabulary is formed.
Pre-Telegraphic Stage of Two-Word Utterances
During this stage, a child continues to increase the regularity of the utterances. They are unmistakable but different because they lack full syntax distinctions. Their utterances also have limited vocabulary size, making them difficult to perceive (Budiharso, 2019). This limits the perspective of the child of the outside world. It is not easy to differentiate whether the child’s limited perception is caused by limited vocabulary or vice versa. Meaning is attached to some utterances, but some are indistinguishable.
Telegraphic Stages of Multi-Sentences
The child begins stringing more than two words together at a time. However, the sentence structure resembles the one used to send telegrams. The words are brief and the most important; for instance, instead of saying, “The child will go to school tomorrow,” the child says, “Child school tomorrow” (Budiharso, 2019). With time, the articulation of sounds continues to develop, as the utterances contain short phrases and tend to follow the grammatical rules of the language.
Comparison of Language Acquisition and Other Theories
The Connection Between Piaget’s Cognitive Development and Language Acquisition
Piaget’s first stage of cognitive development is object permanence. It directly relates to Chomsky’s prelinguistic stage of language acquisition. Children are not able to use language to explain their surroundings (Sanghvi, 2020). The child uses representational play, for instance, babbling and cooing, to communicate.
The second stage of cognitive development is symbolic thought. It directly relates to the holophrastic stage. A child can utter a word with an attached meaning (Budiharso, 2019). The main characteristic of symbolic thought is that the meaning attached to a word might mean something else.
The third stage of cognitive development is called logical thought. It directly relates to the telegraphic stage of language acquisition. The child starts understanding and interpreting words in order to come up with correct sentences. They start forming phrases that contain logical thoughts and perceptions (Budiharso, 2019). They start understanding the way the world is understood through language.
Erikson’s Psychosocial Development in Relation to Language Acquisition
Erickson’s first stage of psychosocial development is trust and mistrust. It has a clear connection to the prelinguistic stage of language development. This is because if children cannot use language to express themselves, they use action toward the people they trust (Budiharso, 2019). For instance, a child cries when held by a stranger but keeps quiet when taken by the mother. The baby’s moods are based on the quality of caregivers and the trust and comfort they receive from them (Orenstein & Lewis, 2021).
When a child is growing, they are completely under the care of the people around them. This means that they cope by imitating the short sounds around them. They learn the language of the environment as they grow up. In the prelinguistic stage, the child responds to sounds in her environment, such as the rhythm of their sucking. They adapt the [p] and the [ph.] sound in a rhythmic manner.
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory and Its Impact on Language Development
Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory views human development mainly as private speech in its early stages. The first stage of language acquisition states that a child uses cooing and babbling as a form of language only when they notice, whether voluntarily or involuntarily (Budiharso, 2019). He also states that a child’s development precedes their learning (McLeod, 2020). Language acquisition states in the pre-telegraphic stage that a child’s perception is influenced by vocabulary and vice versa.
References
Budiharso, T. (2019). Language acquisition in childhood stage: a review. IJOTL-TL: Indonesian Journal of Language Teaching and Linguistics, 4(1), 53-64.
McLeod, S. (2020). Lev Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory.
Orenstein, G. A., & Lewis, L. (2021). Eriksons stages of psychosocial development. In StatPearls [Internet]. StatPearls Publishing.
Sanghvi, P. (2020). Piaget’s theory of cognitive development: a review. Indian Journal of Mental Health, 7(2), 90-96.
Yang, C. (2018). A formalist perspective on language acquisition. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 8(6), 665-706.