ABSTRACT
Explaining how children learn language has proved to be one of the most difficult challenges within developmental psychology. ‘There is a veritable chasm between what the children hear and how they create sentences of their own’ (Pinker 1987). The amount and variety of speech sounds and languages children hear is significant. The difference between children who are disadvantaged in terms of being listened to and read to leads to them having a language gap at age four and this gap widens over the school years. The disadvantaged children don't catch up. Again, this points to the notion of critical learning times when the brain is ‘ready’ to absorb specific kinds of information. So the richness and variety of the language children hear in the first one, two or three years is critically important in determining their progress.
Debates over the importance of motherese or infant-directed speech vary, too. Studies of children in other cultures where there is no such thing also learn language. So although it is helpful, it cannot be claimed to be essential. The group of innate theorists, e.g. Dan Slobin, assert that every child is born with a basic language made up of a set of operating principles. Children, they explain, are innate linguists, who spontaneously apply their developing understanding to language. From the earliest days they are searching for patterns and regularities to develop their speech.
In contrast, the constructivist group of theorists claim that what is important is not the built-in or innate biases, but the children's construction of language as part of the broader picture of intellectual development. They argue that from the beginning, children set out to communicate, and this they do with gestures and sounds and later words. The children learn new words when they are necessary to communicate their thoughts and feelings. Supporting this is the link between children's play with objects as symbols. Children will use an empty cup to feed a toy at about a year, which is the time when they speak their first word. Children who have delayed language very often have delayed imaginative or symbolic play as well. Children who show advanced symbolic play, perhaps combining a series of gestures such as rocking a doll, feeding it and then patting its back are likely to be advanced in their language development as well (McCune 1995).
So although much has been discovered about the development of children's language, Bee and Boyd (2005) show that there are no theorists who ‘have cracked the code’ and ‘the fact that children learn the complex and varied use of their native tongue remains both miraculous and largely mysterious’.
