The development and acquisition of language over the span of lifetime Essay - 1

The development and acquisition of language over the span of lifetime - Essay Example Language acquisition in human beings is evident during infancy most probably at four months. At this time the babies start to discriminate speech sounds and uses babbling which commonly comes from their mothers. They use preverbal Communication which involves gestures and vocalization to make their intents known. The way they acquire this type of language skills is universal and therefore the syntax process takes place slowly as they develop1. The syntactic development of the child is explained using two theories or approaches. The first one includes Nativist theory which argues that children have an innate language acquisition device (LAD). It assumes that LAD is a small area in the brain which has a collection of syntactic rules for all the languages that he or she may be interacting with. The theory notes that the environment alone gives communication full of errors and therefore the device provides the child with novel ability to construct sentences using learned vocabulary. Ther efore because of possession of this LAD they are able to learn any language without the interference of the incomplete information from the environment. The second theory known as the empiricist opposes the fist theory. It argues that there is enough information that can develop the linguistic domain of a child and not LAD.Empiricist believes that brain process is sufficient enough for language development in babies. For a child to acquire language fast, then engagement with environment more often is needed in order to stimulate the rate of development.