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Chapter 1: Acquiring language

Chapter 1: Acquiring language

pp. 1-20

Authors

, Stanford University, California
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Summary

Language is quintessentially human. We depend on spoken language every day, face-to-face, while written language allows us to record and hold on to our history across generations. Language allows us to express innumerable ideas, describe events, tell stories, recite poems, buy, sell, or bargain in markets, administer legal systems, make political speeches, and participate in the myriad other activities that constitute the societies we live in. Language allows us to coordinate what we do with others, relay information, find out answers, and carry out everyday activities – gossiping, making puns, writing memos, reading newspapers, learning histories, enjoying novels, greeting friends, telling stories, selling cars, reading instructions – the list is unending. Language use calls for an intricate web of skills we tend to take for granted. It is an integral part of everyday life that we rely on to convey wants and needs, thoughts, concerns, and plans. Using language seems as natural as breathing or walking.

But babies are not born talking. They learn language, starting immediately from birth. What do they have to learn? They need sounds and words, meanings and constructions. They need to know what to use where and when, how to integrate language with other modes of communication, how to make themselves understood, and how to understand others. How does all this take place? When do children master the skills needed for using language successfully? What stages do they go through as they learn to understand and talk? Do the languages they learn affect the way they think?

This book focusses on children's acquisition of a first language, the stages they go through, and how they use language as they learn. In this chapter, I take up some of the issues that have concerned researchers. I outline some of the theoretical approaches in the field and the assumptions they make and then turn to the overall plan of the book.

Some issues for acquisition

When children learn a first language, they could build on preexisting notions of what to represent with language as well as prior notions of communication. Or they could start from nothing and discover what is (and isn't) represented in the language they are exposed to. Since languages differ, acquisition of a language could also be affected by specific properties of that language.

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