Grammar

First language acquisition

Some of you might know that I have recently moved into a new flat in sunny Kielce, city in the south of Poland. I still haven’t met all of my new neighbours but I was pleased to find out that there is a married couple next door with three lovely children. Their 8-year-old put a smile on my face, the day I first met him, when he said Jest Pani bardzo ładna (You’re a very pretty lady). I thought it was cute and wondered about how nice it is to be a kid and be able to say exactly what you’re thinking without worrying about social awkwardness. My new admirer’s little sister struggles with language a bit more. I asked her how old she was and she replied with Mam 3 roki (I’m three years old – this should be Mam 3 lata in Polish as plural from year – rok is irregular – lata). Children make mistakes such as that one by logical analogy as normally in similar words in Polish plural would be indeed created by adding –i e.g. smok – smoki (dragon - dragons) or krok - kroki (step - steps). The newest addition to the family – another little girl is still an infant and makes no more than cooing and babbling noises. So… all of them three kids communicate on different levels.

How do we do it?

All normal children, regardless of what culture they are born into develop their language skills at roughly the same time. The theory has been suggested that the language acquisition develops together with learning motor skills and kids first learn words for laying down, sitting up, crawling, being held up, eventually standing up and walking. This means that we learn language as babies while doing physical activities. At the same time, however, studies demonstrate that the child’s early environment has a huge impact on their linguistic development and this indeed differs from one culture to the next. N. Chomsky describes language development as language growth and sees it as growing just like parts of baby’s body.

Caretaker speech

The fascinating thing I noticed is that the parents next door help their children in their language acquisition by so called caretaker speech – simplified expression of ideas, full of diminutives, rhetorical questions, repetitions and all manner of what we understand as baby-talk. In English it includes words such as daddy, mummy, poo-poo, doo-doo, pee-pee. The difference can be, however, seen in the way my neighbours speak to their oldest son – here their speech is a bit more elaborate as he certainly is able to understand more than his younger sisters and also uses more language. They don’t do it consciously but they change into teachers and are extremely flexible with switching from one level to the next depending on which child they’re talking to. I guess this skill must be buried deep in our brains and we intuitionally know how to mentor our offspring.

Let me know how it’s going!

Without sounding too creepy I’m trying to keep my eye on the family next door as I find it extremely interesting how their children assimilate language. Those were just first few things I've noticed so far and I’m eager to find out more. If you ever wondered about the process of first language acquisition feel free to share your views. I’d especially love to hear from parents about their children’s learning process. Thanks!

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Grammar