Updated on January 7, 2024

What is Language?

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Language, like most other aspects of complex human behavior, is difficult to define. For one thing, it is not synonymous with communication. There are many ways to communicate without language, although they are often less precise than language. Raising an eyebrow to someone may signal a message, but the message may be vague, unnoticed, or meaningless. And if the eyebrow twitched unintentionally, should a message be read? And how? But language provides us with a set of symbols that can be referenced and defined, and it gives us a structure, or grammar, for organizing the symbols. Thus the use of language is more intentional, more purposeful, and more goal-directed than communication without language. But how do humans acquire symbols, grammar, and meaning? Let’s start by considering the typical order of language development. 

Language Development: When the child is learning to walk he puts a lot of effort into it, seemingly ignoring verbal communication. But improvement seems to come rapidly in language once walking has become a well-mastered habit. 

The Sequence of Language Development: The emergence of language is surprisingly orderly. Although there is considerable variation in the rate at which children learn speech habits, the sequence is relatively sturdy the table below summarizes the major steps in the acquisition of language.

From birth until about six months of age, an infant produces sounds such as grunts and cries that are genetically organized; these sounds appear to represent states of need, and the child has little or no choice about making them. He or she merely responds to the internal and external environment. At around six months, psychologists believe, children enter the babbling stage. Now many of the child’s sounds more nearly resemble parts of adults’ words the child has discarded many sounds not heard in the environment. When a child is about a year old, eager parents detect-often prematurely. Single words that seem to approximate adults’ words. Soon some of these utterances are heard more frequently and regularly. When frequency and regularity increase, we can be fairly sure that the child is beginning to attach some meaning to the symbols, as with the word Mamma.

The Sequence of Emerging Language Behaviors

Birth to 6 monthThe infant period – The child produces such sounds as grunts as grunts, cries, gasps, shrieks, chuckling and cooing (at 4 month)
6 month to6 monthsThe babbling Period – The child produces units of utterances called babbling that differ from one situation to another. These units begin to be acoustically similar to adult utterances because the child slough off the irrelevant phonemes rather than acquiring new phonemes.
9 monthsThe jargon Perios – Stresses and intonation patterns in strings of utterance units clearly correspond to those of the adult. some imitation of general language- like patterns can be identifed. specific morphermes cannot be distinguished easily by the listener.
9 months to 1 yearsThe quiet period- The decrease in vocalization during this periiod of development is interesting. Language habits continue to development between the previous stage and next state, a transition occurs from the usse of jargon to use of words at the adult knows them.
1  years to2  yearsThe holophastic stage- The child single words to indicate whole phrases. He can use base structure but transformational rules to produce the surface structure have not been acquired. The single words is the start of the child’s vocabulary. Pre conventional “words” are considered words by the parent because a given sound pattern is used consistently in similar situations ( for example using”muk” for milk). Thes cocalization sound like words and may be considered words by the pridful parents.The child
 understands much of what he is told. He demonstrates his comprehension by responding in a way that is meaningful to the asult – he may obey a command or point to an object. At the end of this period the child produces from 20 words( at bout 18 months) to 200 words words ( at about 21 months)
2 yearsThe spurt in word development – Many conventional words appear in the child’s vocabulary, which increases from 300 to 400 words at 24 to 27 months to 1000 words at 36 months. He produces two – and three-word utterances, phrases, and sentences in which the pivot-open structure is well established.A given word can be used with a number of intonations: specifically, declarative (“doll,”) emphatics (“doll!”), and interrogative (“doll?”).
3 yearsThe sentence period – At 36 to 39 months, the child can use 1000 words; he uses sentences containing grammatical features that anticipate the adult’s use of language rules. He uses functionally complete sentences – that is, sentences that clearly designate an idea as in the sentences, “This one riding horse.” – that are grammatically incomplete.
3 to 5 yearsThe child uses sentences of all types: non-understandable sentences, functionally complete but grammatically incomplete sentences, simple sentences, simple sentences with phrases, compound sentences, complex sentences, and compound-complex sentences.
5 years to maturityThe individual’s language system shows more frequent use of sentences with complex structure, increases in the variety of types of sentences, and increases in the length of sentences.
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