First Language Acquisition

Infants are born into a social world, a world of touch, sound, and affect, a world of communication. They develop and grow up as social beings, immersed in a network of relationships from the start. It is in this social setting that they are first exposed to language, to language in use. This language forms part of the daily communication around them and to them. It regulates what they do. It tells them about the world, events, actions, objects, and relations within it from various perspectives, and presents them with affective attitudes to both people and events. In short, language is a central factor in the social life of infants. The users of the language they are exposed to provide the context in which children themselves will become proficient at communicating wants and desires, affect and interest, specific perspectives, requests and instructions, questions and observations, and commentary on all aspects of everyday life.

This chapter explores the social setting in which children are exposed to language, respond to it, and begin to use it. It is in and from interaction that children are offered conventional ways of expressing attitudes and of saying things, along with the conventional words and expressions for what they appear to be trying to say. And it is in interaction that children take up adult words, expressions, and constructions. Language can be used for talking about needs and desires, or objects and events in the world at large; for talking about how to behave, how to act, and what to say; for talking about problem-solving, for arguing or explaining, for giving instructions; and for pretending, teasing, joking, or telling stories. In all these uses, language always forms part of a larger system for communication. It's therefore important to keep sight of communicative purposes and goals in looking at how children become members of the speaking community and learn in turn how to talk with the same range of skills as adults. It is in this setting that children learn to break up the stream of speech into smaller and smaller elements, learning to identify words and morphemes, phrases and clauses, as they communicate with the people around them.