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Mechanisms of child language development
Language serves the purpose of communication to express oneself though a systematic and traditional use of sounds, signs, or written symbols. There are four subcomponents in which the child must attain in order to acquire language competence. They include phonology, lexicon, morphology and syntax, and pragmatics. These subcomponents of language development are combined to form the components of language, which are sociolinguistics and literacy. Currently, there is no single accepted theory of language acquisition but various explanations of language development have been accumulated.



Milestones of child language development
Receptive language, the understanding of others' speech, has a gradual development beginning at about 6 months. However, expressive language, the production of words, moves rapidly after its beginning at about a year of age, with a "vocabulary explosion" of rapid word acquisition occurring in the middle of the second year. This vocabulary expansion is closely linked to the ability to repeat spoken words and enables the rapid acquisition of skill in their pronunciation. Grammatical rules and word combinations appear at about age two. Mastery of vocabulary and grammar continue gradually through the preschool and school years. Adolescents still have smaller vocabularies than adults and experience more difficulty with constructions like the passive voice.

Babies from one month old can produce "ooh" sounds which appear to grow out of pleasurable interactions with caregivers in a mutual "dialogue". According to Stern, this process is communication of affect between adult and infant in a mutual, rhythmic interaction. The atonement and "gaze-coupling" in which infant and adult take different roles is thought to anticipate the give-and-take of later dialogue.

From about 6 to 9 months babies produce more vowels, some consonants and echolalia, or the frequent repetition of sounds like "dadadada" which appear to have some phonetic characteristics of later speech. It is thought that a crucial part of the development of speech is the time caregivers spend "guessing" what their infants are trying to communicate thus integrating the child into their social world. When infants are trying to learn words from others they tend to create protowords, which is a "unique string of phonemes that serve word-like functions. The attribution of intentionality to the infant's utterances has been called "shared memory" and forms a complex series of actions, intentions and actions in response in an improvised way.

It has been argued that children's phonological systems develop in ways that are parallel to adult languages, even if they are using unrecognizable "words". First words have the function of naming or labeling but also condense meaning as in "milk" meaning "I want milk". Vocabulary typically grows from about 20 words at 18 months to around 200 words at 21 months. From around 18 months the child starts to combine words into two word sentences. Typically the adult expands it to clarify meaning. By 24–27 months the child is producing three or four word sentences using a logical, if not strictly correct, syntax. The theory is that children apply a basic set of rules such as adding 's' for plurals or inventing simpler words out of words too complicated to repeat like "choskit" for chocolate biscuit. Following this there is a rapid appearance of grammatical rules and ordering of sentences. There is often an interest in rhyme, and imaginative play frequently includes conversations. Children's recorded monologues give insight into the development of the process of organizing information into meaningful units.

By three years the child is beginning to use complex sentences, including relative clauses, although still perfecting various linguistic systems. By five years of age the child's use of language is very similar to that of an adult. From the age of about three children can indicate fantasy or make-believe linguistically, produce coherent personal stories and fictional narrative with beginnings and endings. It is argued that children devise narrative as a way of understanding their own experience and as a medium for communicating their meaning to others. The ability to engage in extended discourse emerges over time from regular conversation with adults and peers. For this the child needs to learn to combine his perspective with that of others and with outside events and learn to use linguistic indicators to show he is doing this. They also learn to adjust their language depending on to whom they are speaking. Typically by the age of about 9 a child can recount other narratives in addition to their own experiences, from the perspectives of the author, the characters in the story and their own views.

Theories of Language Development
Although the role of adult discourse is important in facilitating the child's learning, there is considerable disagreement among theorists about the extent to which children's early meanings and expressive words arise. Findings about the initial mapping of new words, the ability to decontextualize words, and refine meaning of words are diverse. One hypothesis is known as the syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis which refers to the child's ability to infer meaning from cues, using grammatical information from the structure of sentences. Another is the multi-route model in which it is argued that context-bound words and referential words follow different routes; the first being mapped onto event representations and the latter onto mental representations. In this model, parental input has a critical role but the children ultimately rely on cognitive processing to establish subsequent use of words. However, naturalistic research on language development has indicated that preschoolers' vocabularies are strongly associated with the number of words addressed to them by adults. There is no single accepted theory of language acquisition. Instead, there are current theories that help to explain theories of language, theories of cognition, and theories of development. They include the generativist theory, social interactionist theory, usage-based theory (Tomasello), connectionist theory, and behaviorist theory ((Skinner). Generativist theories refer to Universal Grammar being innate where language experience activates innate knowledge. Social interactionist theories define language as a social phenomenon. This theory states that children acquire language because they want to communicate with others; this theory is heavily based on social-cognitive abilities that drive the language acquisition process. Usage-based theories define language as a set of formulas that emerge from the child’s learning abilities in correspondence with its social cognitive interpretation and understanding of the speakers’ intended meanings. Connectionist theories is a pattern-learning procedure and defines language as a system composed of smaller subsystems or patterns of sound or meaning. Behaviorist theories define language as the establishment of positive reinforcement, but is now regarded a theory of historical interest.

Language and its relation to communication
Communication can be defined as the exchange and negotiation of information between two or more individuals through verbal and nonverbal symbols, oral and written (or visual) modes, and the production and comprehension processes of communication. Communicative language is nonverbal and/or verbal, and to achieve communication competence, four components must be met. These four components of communication competence include: grammatical competence (vocabulary knowledge, rules of word sentence formation, etc), sociolinguistic competence (appropriateness of meanings and grammatical forms in different social contexts), discourse competence (knowledge required to combine forms and meanings), and strategic competence (knowledge of verbal and nonverbal communication strategies). The attainment of communicative competence is an essential part of actual communication. Language development is viewed as a motive to communication, and the communicative function of language in-turn provides the motive for language development. Between 9-12 months of age, children view themselves as joining the communicative world. Before 9-12 months, babies interact with objects and interact with people, but they do not interact with people about objects. This developmental change is the change from primary intersubjectivity (capacity to share oneself with others) to secondary intersubjectivity (capacity to share one’s experience), which changes the infant from an unsociable to socially engaging creature. Around 12 months of age a communicative use of gesture is used. This gesture includes communicative pointing where an infant points to request something, or to point to provide information. Another gesture of communication is presented around the age of 10 and 11 months where infants start gaze-following; they look where another person is looking. This joint attention result in changes to their social cognitive skills between the ages of 9 and 15 months as their time is spent increasingly with others. Children’s use of non-verbal communicative gestures foretells future language development. The use of non-verbal communication in the form of gestures indicate the child’s interest in communication development, and the meanings they choose to convey that are soon revealed through the verbalization of language. Language acquisition and development contribute to the verbal form of communication. Children originate with a linguistic system where words they learn, are the words used for functional meaning. This instigation of speech has been termed pragmatic bootstrapping. According to this, children view words as a means of social construction, and that words are used to connect the understanding of communicative intentions of the speaker who speaks a new word. Hence, the competence of verbal communication through language is achieved through the attainability of syntax or grammar. Another function of communication through language is pragmatic development. Pragmatic development includes the child’s intentions of communication before he/she knows how to express these intentions, and throughout the first few years of life both language and communicative functions develop. When children acquire language and learn to use language for communicative functions (pragmatics), children also gain knowledge about the participation in conversations and relating to past experiences/events (discourse knowledge), and how to use language appropriately in congruence with their social situation or social group (sociolinguistic knowledge). Within the first two years of life, a child’s language ability progresses and conversational skills, such as the mechanics of verbal interaction, develop. Mechanics of verbal interaction include taking turns, initiating topics, repairing miscommunication, and responding to lengthen or sustain dialogue. Conversation is asymmetrical when a child interacts with an adult because the adult is the one to create structure in the conversation, and to build upon the child’s contributions. In accordance to the child’s developing conversational skills, asymmetrical conversation between adult and child modulate to an equal temperament of conversation. This shift in balance of conversation suggests a narrative discourse development in communication. Ordinarily, the development of communicative competence and the development of language are positively correlated with one another, however, the correlation is not flawless. --Rebecca L 02:03, 27 October 2014 (UTC)