Psycholinguistic: Children’s Language Acquisition

Steps on Making Sentence

According to Bellugi and Klima there are three steps/periods for a child to make a complex sentence by grammatically correct.

PERIOD	AGE	SENTENCE
I	1 ½  - 2 1/2 years old	No money; not a teddy bear; no play that; no fall; no singing song; no the sun shining.
II	3 – 4 years old	I don’t want it; I don’t know his name; we can’t talk; you can’t dance; book say no; touch the snow no; that no memory; he no bite you; etc.
III	5 – 6 years old	John can’t have one; this can’t stick; I didn’t did it; you didn’t cough me; donna won’t let go; I’m not a doctor; I not hurt him; etc.

In the first period , they only can say a not complete sentence. They always put the word “no” before each word or phrase. In the second step, sometimes they can make a good sentence by using simple present tense. But, sometimes they still make it in wrong way. In the last period, they already be able to make a sentence well and more complete in past tense

Speech Understanding for kids

Kids can now the abstract word through environmental experience, for example “hungry”. If they never fill hungry it absolutely they will not know the word of hungry. Kids only know two kinds of words, namely real word (ex.: doll) and abstract word (ex.: hungry).

Memory and language acquisition

A kid has a very good memory. He is a very good imitator. He has remarkable memory. So, it’s really important for parents to pay this time to use it teach him good thing.

Parentese and Baby Talk

Parentese is a term used by parents to refer to the short of speech that children receive when they are young. This term has distinctive characteristics, namely:

·        They talk what is happening

·        They talk by using simple vocabulary

·        They talk by using simple structure

·        They speak slowly with pause

·        They give stressing/emphasize to the word

Baby talk is a term which used by a baby to refer to the short of speech when he say or speak for the first time. This term also known as one-word utterance.

Sources:

• Lecturer Annotation
• www.wikipedia.org
• www.wingliwu.tripod.com