CHAPTER1

OPENING
A. BACKGROUND
Language acquisition is one of the central topics in cognitive science. Every t
heory of cognition has tried to explain it. Probably no other topic has aroused
such controversy. Possessing a language is the quintessentially human trait; a
ll normal human speaks, no nonhuman animal does. Learning a first language is so
mething every child does successfully, in a matter of a few years and without th
e need for formal lessons. With language so close to the core of what it means t
o be human, it is not surprising that children’s acquisition of language has rec
eived so much attention Anyone with strong views the human mind would like to sh
ow that children first few steps are steps in right direction.
One of the phases of first language acquisition is telegraphic speech ( this ph
ase take place when child have age two and three years old . In this paper, I c
oncern to the first language acquisition of the 2,5 years child. At age 2 and 3
year, child goes into commission the multiple- word utterances or also said as t
elegraphic speech. Child also can form the sentences and sort that forms truly.
Child vocabularies expand at full speed and can reach hundreds of words, and als
o can the way of pronunciation progressively looks like with the adult language
such as “what that?” (apa itu). At age early , a child learns step by his/ her o
wn.
B. ROBLEM STATEMENTS
There are some problem statements of this paper. They are:
1. Mention theoretical review of the first language acquisition and neuroan
atomy theories.
2. list of result of the observation
3. Explanation or description of the observation

CHAPTER 2
DISCUSSION
A. Theoretical review of first language acquisition and neuroanatomy theori
es
1. first language acquisition theories
there are four theories of first language acquisition namely;
a. Innate Hypothesis
There are four main points of this hypothesis namely:
• Humans are born “ready” for languages
• Acquisition is rapid, only two years from the time the child produces h
er first word at around the age of one until the major part of the grammar is ac
quires at around three.
• Poverty of the stimulus
input is unrealistic: speech errors, false , starts, ungrammatical and i
ncomplete sentences
Some information is extremely infrequent
• Exposure combined with general grammatical principles construct a gramma
r.
This theory is connected with the writings of Noam Chomsky, although the theory
has been around for hundreds of years. Children are born with the innate capacit
y for learning human language. Humans are destined to speak. Children discover t
he grammar of their language based on their own inborn grammar. Certain aspects
of language structure seem to be preordained by the cognitive structures of the
human mind. This accounts for certain very basic universal features of language
structure: every language has nouns/ verbs, consonants and vowels. It is assume
d that children are programmed , hard- wired, to acquire things( the “gavagai” e
xperiment)
b. cognitive theory- Jean piaget ( 1896-1980)
Within the context of the child’s broader intellectual development. A child firs
t become aware of a concept, such as relative size, and only afterward do they a
cquire the words and pattern to convey that concept. Simple ideas are expressed
earlier than more complex ones even if they are grammatically more complicated .
conditional mood is one of the last ( cf. Spanish vs Russian). There is a consi
stent order of mastery of the most common function morphemes in a language for e
xample: From English: first…ing, then in and on , then the plural – s, last are
the forms of the verb to be. Seems to be conditioned by logical complexity: plur
al is simple, while forms of the verb to be require sensitivity to both number a
nd tense.
Pros- cons….. clearly there is some link between cognitive development and langu
age acquisition: Piaget’s theory helps explain the order in which certain aspect
s of language are acquired. But his theory does not explain why language emerges
in the first place. Apes also develop cognitively in much the same way as young
children in the first view years of life, but language acquisition does not fol
low naturally from their development. Bees develop the cognitive ability to resp
ond to many shades of color, but bees never develop any communication signals ba
sed on shades of color.
c. Imitation and positive reinforcement
Children learn by imitating and repetition what they hear. Positive reinforcemen
t and corrections also play a major role in language acquisition . Children do i
mitate adults . Repetition of new words and phrases is basic feature of children
’s speech. This is the behaviorist view popular in the 40’s and 50’s, but challe
nged, since imitation alone cannot possibly account for all language acquisition
. There are some notes of this theory :
Children often make grammatical mistakes that they couldn’t possibly hav
e heard: cookies gooder than bread. Bill taked the toy. We goed to the store, do
n’t giggle me.
This hypothesis would not account for the many instances when adults do
not coach their children in language skills. Positive reinforcement doesn’t seem
to speed up the language acquisition process. Children do not respond to or pro
duce metalanguage until 3 or 4, after the main portion of the grammar has been m
astered.( children do not comprehend language structure)
d. Critical – age hypothesis
Lennerberg(1967). First proposed that the ability to learn a native lang
uage develops within a fixed period, from birth to puberty
“wild” children or children in isolation
- Amala and Kamala (1920) were found in India, having been reared with wolves
- Genie( 1970) had been confined to a small room under conditions of physical
restraint from the age of eighteen months until fourteen years
- These cases show that innate ability to acuire language must be triggered by
language
- The children in isolation were not able to acquire language deliberate linguis
tic teaching.
Beyond the critical age humans cannot acquire much of syntax and inflect
ion morphology
e. Analogy theory
-.Children learn language by hearing a sentences using it as a sample for anothe
r sentences
- However, analogy does not work.
Stages in child language acquistion--Universal
1. Pre-speech:
Much of importance goes on even before the child utters his first word: infants
learn to pay attention to speech, pays attention to intonation and the rhythm
of speech long before they begin to speak.
Child learn to recognize the distinctive sounds, the phonemes of the
language they hear from birth long before they are able to pronounce them. Infa
nts can distinguish between /p/ and /b/ at three or four months (in an experimen
t with /ba/ played vs. /pa/, a two month infant showed awareness of the change).
But children do not learn how to use these sounds until much later-- around the
second year or later--as shown by the experiment with /pok/ and /bok/. The sam
e is true for rising vs. falling intonation, which only becomes systematically f
untional much later. Infants know the difference between one language and anoth
er by recognition of phonological patterns (Story of the Russian fairy tale book
.)
2. Babbling stage.
Begins at several months of age. Characterized by indiscriminate utterance of s
peech sounds-- many of which may not be used in the given language but are found
in other languages-- clicks. Many native speech sounds may be absent-- some ar
e naturally harder to pronounce-- /r/ /th/. Very few consonant clusters and rep
eated syllables are common.
3. One word (holophrastic) stage.
Infants may utter their first word as early as nine months: usually mama, dada
(these words resemble babbling). Deaf babies whose parents use sign language be
gin making their first word/gestures around eight months. This stage is charact
erized by the production of actual speech signs. Often the words are simplified
: "du" for duck, "ba" for bottle. When the child has acquired about 50 words he
develops regular pronunciation patterns. This may even distort certain words-- t
urtle becomes "kurka". Incorrect pronunciations are systematic at this time: all
words with /r/ are pronounced as /w/. sick--thick, thick--fick. Children tend
to perceive more phonemic contrasts than they are able to produce themselves.
The first 50 words tend to be names of important persons, greetings, foods
, highlights of the daily routine such as baths, ability to change their environ
ment-give, take, go, up, down, open.
The meaning of words may not correspond to that of adult language:
Overextension dog may mean any four legged creature. apple may mean any
round object. bird may mean any flying object. Child can still distinguish be
tween the differences, simply hasn t learned that they are linguistically meanin
gful. Dissimilarities linguistically redundant.
two patterns in child word learning--
Referential-- names of objects.
Expressive-- personal desires and social interactions: bye-bye, hi, go
od,
This is a continuum. Child s place on this continuum partly due to pare
nt s style: naming vs. pointing. The extra-linguistic context provides much of
the speech info. Rising and falling intonation may or may not be used to disti
nguish questions from statements at the one-word stage. Words left out if the c
ontexts makes them obvious. At this stage, utterances show no internal grammati
cal structure (much like the sentence yes in adult speech, which can t be broken
down into subject, predicate, etc.)
4. Combining words
18 to 2 years. By two and a half years most children speak in sentences of seve
ral words--but their grammar is far from complete. This stage rapidly progresses
into what has been termed a fifth and final stage of language acquisition, the
all hell breaks loose stage. By six the child s grammar approximates that of ad
ults. Children learning any language seem to encode the same limited set of mea
nings in their first sentences: ownership-- Daddy s shoes; describing events Me
fall; labelling That dog; locational relations toy in box.
Sentences usually two words. Children can repeat more complex sentences spoken
by adults but cannot create them until later (called prefabricated routines) not
indicative of the child s grammar.
Other patterns in early speech
The ends of words learned more quickly: -raff for giraff, -mato for tom
ato, -narna for banana. This is true even in lang. where the stress in always
on the first syllable. Avoidance of exceptions overextention of a pattern: go-go
ed; good-gooder.
 The rest of the acquisition of grammar is idiosyncratic some children re
peat more, others create more. Some children produce a great number of words be
fore beginning to combine them into sentences. Others immediately begin to make
sentences. There may be several individual routes to mastering one s native lan
guage.
2. Neuroanatomy
Neuroanatomy is the study of the anatomy of nervous tissue and neural structures
of the nervous system.
A. THE HUMAN NERVOUS SYSTEM
Viewed as a whole, the human nervous system is primarily concerned with the proc
essing of sensory input or with the execution of motor output (physical action).
Sensory input and motor output are relevant for both an internal and an externa
l environment. For example, sensory input from the internal environment provides
a person with an awareness of thirst. Sensory input from the external environme
nt provides that person with information on how to obtain water. Motor activity
directed to the external environment can result in the ingestion of water. Motor
activity in the internal environment can assist the ingestion of water until se
nsory information from the internal environment provides evidence that enough wa
ter has been consumed.
The internal environment is primarily the domain of the autonomic nervous system
(ANS), a system that is (for the most part) not subject to conscious awareness
or control. The kidneys, intestines, lungs, glands, blood vessels, heart muscle,
etc. are under the control of the ANS. The two divisions of the autonomic nervo
us system are the sympathetic ("fight or flight") and the parasympathetic ("rest
and digest"). Whereas sympathetic stimulation increases heart rate, constricts
blood vessels and decreases peristalsis in the intestine, parasympathetic stimul
ation has the opposite effects.
Anatomically, the human nervous system is divided into two portions: the central
nervous system (CNS) and the peripheral nervous system (PNS). The autonomic ner
vous system is a functional division of the nervous system which is part of both
the CNS and the PNS.
B. THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM
The central nervous system (CNS), consists of the spinal cord and the brain. The
spinal cord is housed in the backbone, with 30 pairs of nerves receiving sensor
y information and sending motor information to the body. The spinal cord and its
nerves are divided into four regions: cervical (neck), thoracic (chest), lumbar
(loin) and sacral (pelvis). The sensory information is mostly somatosensory: to
uch, temperature, pressure and pain ("somato" = "body"). Axons in these nerves t
end to cross to the opposite side of the spinal cord so that sensation-in and co
ntrol-of the right side of the body are in the left brain, and vice versa. Withi
n the spinal cord axons ascend-from and descend-to the brain in well-segregated
tracts: for crude touch, for pain & temperature, for motor control, and for prop
rioception&kinesthesia (muscle, tendon & joint position as well as muscle tensio
n and movementinformation).

Crowning the CNS is the cerebral cortex, which is often regarded as the seat of
the mind. The cerebral cortex has the appearance of a ball of worms. A "worm" (e
levated ridge) is called a gyrus, whereas a "valley" between worms is called as
sulcus.
The exterior of the cerebral cortex is divided into four lobes: frontal, parieta
l, temporal and occipital. Much of the occipital lobe is devoted to processing s
ensory input from the eyes whereas a portion of the temporal lobe is devoted to
processing sensory input from the ears, and a portion of the frontal lobe is dev
oted to processing sensory information from the nose. The frontmost portion of t
he parietal lobe (the postcentral gyrus) is concerned with representing sensory
information from the body somatosensory information). The rearmost portion of th
e frontal lobe (the precentral gyrus) is concerned with conveying motor informat
ion (initiation of voluntary movement) to the body,ie, muscle control. The centr
al sulcus separates the precentral gyrus from the postcentral gyrus.
Precise localization of the body parts supplied by both the somatosensory and so
matomotor gyros of the cerebral cortex is possible. Parts of the body that have
acute sensation or fine motor control, such as the face and hands, occupy a disp
roportionately large area of the cortex.

Child identity
Name : Arlin
Age : 2 years
Sex : male
Parents:
Father : Aliba
Profession : Enterpreneurship
Age : 35 years
Education : SMA
Tribe : butonese
Mother :Darsih
Job : house wife
Age : 23 years
Education : SMA
Tribe : munanese
Place : Dormitory area

C. description of result of the observation

base on the table above, I can conclude that:
 , the child in two years olds can form the sentence and sort that forms
truly and there is also a lot of missing from speech. It is because his parents
provide little in the way of language instruction to the child and his parents a
lso do not teach the children to speak and in fact, his parents spend the majori
ty of the correcting falsehood rather than correcting erroneous grammars. It is
a fact that children don’t produce adult- utterances from the very beginning of
their multiple- word speech. And so much of the debate on gonging in child firs
t language acquisition has been devote to the nature and extent of “ what gets m
issed out where” in regards their early grammatical systems. Theory internal mea
sures have been spawned every which in effort to account for the lack of apparen
t adult like language in young children , theories abound despite some evidence
that would seem to point to the contrary , some rebuts syntactic theories from t
he outset continue to view the very young child as maintaining an operative leve
l of language closely bound to abstract knowledge of grammatical categories ( pi
nker 1984, hymes 1986 and Radford- galasso 1998).
The child in two years old can memorize in their long term memory, the w
ord that he hears before and produce it in another day. It is because virtuall
y all neurons are formed and they migrate into their proper locations in the bra
in but head size brain weight, and thickness of the cerebral cortex, where the
synapses sub serving mental computation takes place. This is based on huttenloc
her 1958, state that synapses continue to develop picking in number between nine
months and two years (depending on the brain region). At which point the child
has 50 % more synapses than the adult.
The child in the two years old imitate what his parents say and repeat t
he words or phrase. This is relate to the imitate and positive reinforcement the
ory that the children learn by imitating and repeating what they hear.

CHAPTER 3
CLOSING
A. Conclusion
three theories--the imitation theory, the innateness theory, and the cognitive
theory--are probably correct to a degree; each describes particular facets of a
complex phenomenon.
1) Cognitive development is an essential prerequisite for linguistic devel
opment. But language acquisition doesn t occur spontaneously because of cogniti
ve development (as seems to be the case in animal systems of communication.
2) Repetition, imitation, structured input are all a part of language acqu
isition. Greater exposure to language might speed language acquisition up but i
s not essential.
3) Innate learning device. All children exposed to language, regardless of
environmental factors and differences in intelligence, are able to acquire very
complex grammars at a very early age. Something innate to the child--the LAD--
allows for such rapid and successful language acquisition by children.
All of the above studies have revealed a few universally accepted facts ab
out child language acquisition.
1) Child Language acquisition is a natural consequence of human society. A
ll children exposed to language acquire it naturally without deliberate efforts
of teaching or learning.
2) The outcome of first language acquisition will be the same regardless o
f individual differences in intelligence. Two children with quite different int
ellectual abilities will both acquire a highly complex native language by age si
x.
3) Although the basic ability to acquire language is innate to the child,
no specific structural property of language has yet been proven to be innate. T
herefore, any infant is equally capable of acquiring any language. Infants born
of different racial stocks will acquire the same form of language if raised in
the same linguistic environment. There is no such a thing as a Russian language
 gene or a Swahili language gene. An infant born of Russian parents and adopted
into an American family will acquire the same form of English as his stepbrothe
rs and sisters.
3.

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