ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the most significant studies and writings about how children learn language. It provides a broad framework within which readers can identify particular contributions to the field of language development. The chapter outlines the relationship between language development and more general learning or cognition. Language learning links with cognition as well as social behaviour. The studies of child language development describe the general descriptions or features of developmental stages. Babies and children are learning to talk at the same time as other important growth is also taking place simultaneously. As an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, Mr Chomsky studied linguistics, mathematics and philosophy, setting the foundation for his novel perspective. Chomsky's description describes the grammatical structures of the language as a means of demonstrating the ways in which young children learn one aspect of the 'rules of language'.
