ABSTRACT
Children’s linguistic development progresses at an astonishing rate. At the age of 6-8 months already, when children are only just starting to crawl, their linguistic abilities are so sensitive that they are able to discriminate between the sounds of what will become their native language and between sounds in other languages (e.g. Werker & Tees, 1984). At around age 1 year, they start to produce their first words, and approximately 6 months later they start to combine words with each other, adding grammatical elements such as articles, plural forms and prepositions, to form increasingly complex sentences such that at around age 3, when they might be learning how to ride a tricycle, they start to produce complex sentences such as relative clauses.1
What is more remarkable is that these stages are consistent across children and that they have been observed for various languages, including sign languages (see e.g. Lillo-Martin, 1999). The rapidity and uniformity of language acquisition across different learning conditions also suggests (though of course does not necessarily entail) that children must come equipped for the task with innate knowledge about language.
