Syntactic Development of Children Essay Example for Free

Syntactic Development of Children analyzeLanguage victimizationphonology, semantics, syntax and pragmaticsplays a key role in child training whereas it acts as an index for the important facets of child progression, its more important function is that it facilitates the childs course of learning in price of linguistics and cognitive abilities.The pattern and capacity of the child learner for language developmentthe acknowledgement of morphemes and the spend of syntax-is normally referred to as introductory Language Acquistion. Chomsky (1975), one of the major proponents of Natures role in acquisition, contended that there exist a universal grammar and that the child-learners (/infants/growing child) have innate, language-specific abilities that facilitate and constrain language learning. Children are said to develop an almost innate or automatic synaptic rules without explicit instruction from their surround/environment.The generative language and the transformation adop ts a minimalist approach wherein there is economy in terms of derivation and representation in grammar and syntax. Chomsky (195965) suggested the Bare Phase Structure wherein sentence building is derivational, not pre-conceived, binarily-branched, and no recognizable head and terminal parts. Up to now, such notion is vague and problematic.Basically, language development starts from two-word utterances during the archean stage of the childs life to a rule-governed system of language at ages cardinal to four. Past four years old, the child starts to explore and learn morphology creatively. Concomitant to this is the development of Mean Length Utterances (MLUs) from simple telegraphic morphemes to well-formed morphemes. Grammatical morphemes refer to the inflection of content (e.g. moment and tenses) and function of words (e.g. preposition and articles) (Brown 1973).Acquisition of grammatical morphemes follows a certain order which is dependent on the complexity of the (set of) wo rds. Prepositions, plural forms and present progressive tenses are easily acquired compared to contractible copula and auxiliary forms of the words. Such order is impelled by semantic and syntactic complexity. Learners from pre-school and first grade have the capacity to correctly apply grammatical morphemes to novel words.Dulay and Burt (197882) constructed the acquisition hierarchy for 13 English grammatical morphemes for Spanish-speaking- and Cantonese-speaking children which is summarily describes as follows Group 1 (Nominative/Accusative simple declarative sentences), Group II (singular copula, s/p auxiliary, progressive), Group III (Past Irregular, possessive, tertiary person singular, conditional auxiliary, long plural) and Group IV (perfect auxiliary and past participle). The problem with such arrogance on interlanguage is that the theory is too reduced or oversimplified.While it is true that syntactic development follows a process, the major problems involved are the dif ferent comparison groups used for the study, the progression is not systematically defined, and of course, there exist the language variation. Such language variation is real and must be recognized as a challenge for future research on the subject. To fully understand interlanguage, future researchers should reckon a wider scope in cognitive and linguistic aspects correlated to early learning.Works CitedBrown, R. A First Language The Early Stages. Cambridge, Mass. Harvard UP,1973.Chomsky, N. Reflections on Language. NY Pantheon Books, 1975.Chomsky, Noam. 1959. Review of Verbal Behavior by B.F. Skinner. Language 35, 26-58. Chomsky, Noam. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press, 1965Dulay, H., and M. Burt.. Errors and strategies in child second language acquisition. TESOL Quaterley 1974, 8, 129-136.Dulay, H., and M. Burt. Some remarks on creativity in language acquisition. In William C. Ritchie (ed.). jiffy Language Acquisition Research, NY Academic Press, 1978 .Dulay, H.,M.Burt, and S. D. Krashen. Language Two. New York Oxford UP, 1982.Dulay, H., E. Hernandez-Chavez, and M. Burt. The process of becoming bilingual. In S. Singh and J. Lynch (ed). symptomatic Procedures in Hearing, Speech and Language. Baltimore University Park Press, 1978, 251-303.