ABSTRACT
The extraordinary diversity of the world's languages also argues for ancient origin of speech. Language development follows a regular chronology for all children everywhere—from babbling to short words to short sentences, with concomitant increases in complexity. Language is popularly thought of as a system of communication, a way of sharing ideas and information with others; and indeed it is. Everyone else in the same language community codify our experiences into words and put those words together to make meaningful utterances. The use of language facilitates perceptual discrimination. A number of linguists believe that human beings have a genetically determined predisposition for language. Like the use of "foots" as the plural of "foot" or the use of "gooder" as the comparative of "good," it indicates that the child is fitting his own language system into the one he was born into.
