A. INTRODUCTION
Language may be set in motion by
a biological clock, similar to the one which causes kittens to pone their eyes
when they are few days old, chrysalises to change into butterflies after several
weeks, and humans to become sexually mature at around 13 years of age.
B. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF BIOLOGICALLY
TRIGGERED BEHAVIOR
1. The Behavior Emerges Before it is Necessary
Without some type of inborn
mechanism, language might develop only when parents left children to support
for themselves. It would emerge at different times in different cultures and
this would lead to greatly different levels of language skills.
2. Its Appearance is not Result of a Conscious
Decision
Children
acquire language without making any conscious decision about it. This is quite
unlike a decision to learn to jump a 4-foot height, or hit a tennis ball, when
a child sets herself a target, then organizes strenuous practice sessions as
she strives towards her goal.
3. The Emergence of the Behavior is not
Triggered by External Events
Children begin to talk even when
their surroundings remain unchanged. Most of them live in the same house, eat
the same food, have the same parents, and follow the same routine. No specific
event or feature in their surroundings suddenly starts them off talking. In
fact, according to more recent research, few children are truly deprived. In
many cases, the supposedly ‘language impoverished’ children were just puzzled
for a time when they were exposed to a dialect or accent unlike their own.
4. Direct Teaching And Intensive Practice Have
Relatively Little Effect
In activities such as typing or
playing tennis, a person’s achievement is often
directly related to the amount of teaching
they receive and the hours of practice they put in. Even people who are not
‘naturally’ superb athletes can sometime win tennis tournaments through hard
work and good coaching. But the same is not true of language, where direct
teaching seems to be a failure.
Parents
who consciously try to ‘coach’ their children by simplifying and repeating may
be actually interfering with their progress. Language that is impoverished is
harder to learn, not simpler. Children appear to be naturally ‘set’ to extract
a grammar for themselves, provided they have sufficient data at their disposal.
Those who get on best are those who are exposed to a rich variety of language –
in other words, those whose parents talk to them in a normal way.
5. There is a Regular Sequence of ‘Milestones’
Correlating with Age And Other Aspects of Development – The Pre-Ordained
Programme
Babies hear merely a general
mish-mash of sound, and only gradually notice details. However, infants may be
capable of discriminating a lot or than we realize. They seem to be specially
pre-set to notice the rhythms and sounds of speech. Probably they begin to
‘tune in’ before birth. Infants suck more strongly when they are aroused and
interest in what they hear. The gradual change of cooing to babbling occurs
around the time an infant begins to sit up. Children utter single words just
before they start to walk. Grammar becomes complex as hand and finger
co-ordination develops.
6. There May be a ‘Critical Period’ for the
Acquisition of the Behavior
Children clearly start talking
at about the age of 2. And it seemed possible that language ability ceased at
around 13. Babies who have had this half of their brain removed in the first
year of life have considerable language problems.
The example of these
cases are three socially isolated children, Isabelle, Genie, and Chelsea, who
was provided superficial support for this view. All three were cut off from
language until long after the time they would have acquired it, they had been
brought up in normal circumstances.
original resource: Suparman, Ujang. 2010. Psycholinguistics: The Theory of Language Acquisition. Bandung: Arfino Raya.
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