University of Aberdeen

LN1003 English Structure and Use

TO WHAT EXTENT IS IT A MYTH

4 December 2015
THAT CHILDREN ACQUIRE
LANGUAGE BY REPEATING WHAT
THEY HEAR FROM ADULTS?

Isabel Garca-Velasco Garzs

Index
1.

Introductory...........................................................................................................2

2.

How do children learn to speak?...........................................................................2

3.

2.1.

Stages in the development of the language....................................................2

2.2.

Theories of first language acquisition............................................................2

Do children acquire language by repeating what they hear from adults?.............3

3.1. Deaf children: how do they acquire language if they cannot hear?...........3
3.2. Wild children: the case of Victor of Aveyron and Genie............................4

4.

Conclusions...........................................................................................................4

5.

References.............................................................................................................5

1. Introductory
It is said that children do what adults do, so in terms of language acquisition,
children say what they hear from adults. There have been some theories about
language acquisition, but linguists do not agree on which one is the most accurate
one. The most famous are nativism and empiricism.
To know the nature of language, there have been a lot of studies and experiments,
such as the study of deaf children, who cannot hear anything from adults, or wild
children, who have grown with no contact with other people. We will see all of this
in more detail below.

2. How do children learn to speak?

2.1.
Stages in the development of the language
Since birth, a baby is learning from his environment and applying this knowledge to
relate with the world. But they do not learn the language all of a sudden, children
carry on learning their native language until the age of five.
During the first year of life, children learn their first words and their first sounds;
although they are very simple, since the phonemes of the kid are not fully
developed. Then, after the first year, the child learns the morphemes, followed by
the articles, pronouns, prepositions and verbs.
When the child is two years old, he starts producing their first sentences. They often
start with two-word sentences, and as they grow, they develop the structure of
sentences. Then, up to the age of four, they start having conversations. And finally,
when they are five years old, they are capable of producing more complicated
sentences, and they start to distinguish between what is right and what is wrong.
After the age of five, it is more difficult to learn a language, so children that learn to
speak later than age five have problems with their speaking or understanding of a
language; or do not learn to speak at all.

2.2.
Theories of first language acquisition
Language acquisition has been an interesting subject of study in every culture. The
first experiment was carried on by Psammetichus I when he tried to discover what
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the original language was by raising two babies without anybody talking to them. He
thought that they would start to speak the language of the original people.
Nevertheless, the prevailing theories nowadays have nothing to do with these
ancient experiments. In the last century, linguists have been questioning whether the
language is something that we learn, or it is something that is part of our human
nature. There are two main positions regarding the theories of language acquisition:
a. Nativism: this theory suggest that children are born with an innate ability to
learn a language, our brain is predisposed to acquire the language by our
perception of the world. This theory was supported by Noah Chomsky.
b. Empiricism: when we are born, our brain is empty, so we have no notions of
language. This theory was supported by B. F. Skinner, who remarked that
children learn a language by operative conditioning: a childs behaviour is
modified by positive or negative consequences of their actions.
There are some other theories, but they have not had the same impact as those
already mentioned. For example, the theory of cognitive development, proposed by
Jean Piaget, established that the kids acquire their languages as their intelligence
develops. Another theory is the social constructivism, attributed to Lev Vygotsky, in
which mental processes are influenced by the social context in which they develop.
Finally, another theory is emergentism, which explains that language appears by
interacting with other basic systems.

3. Do children acquire language by repeating what they

hear from adults?
There are some cases in which a kid does not have any contact with the oral
language, so they cannot hear anything from adults. Some of the main cases will be
described below.

3.1.
Deaf children: how do they acquire language if they cannot
hear?
Some kids do not have the chance of learning an oral language because they have
some hearing problems. Depending on the nature of these problems, the kid will be
able of learning a language or not.

For example, deaf children of deaf parents will not learn to communicate as deaf
children of hearing parents. Deaf children of deaf parents will learn sign language as
if it was their mother tongue since sign language is a language as any other.
On the other hand, deaf children of deaf parents will try to communicate by gestures,
or they try to copy the mouth movements that they see from adults. These children
develop some specific gestures that allow them to communicate with their family,
even though they can learn sign language later in their childhood.
So we can come to the conclusion that deaf children learn to communicate repeating
what they see or what adults do, they learn to communicate by connecting with
people; they do not repeat what they hear from adults

3.2.
Wild children: the case of Victor of Aveyron and Genie
There have been some cases in which some kids grow up without any socialization.
The most famous are the cases of Victor of Aveyron and Genie.
Victor of Aveyron was a French kid found in France in the 19 th century. He had lived
away from civilization and he could not talk at all. People tried to study his
behaviour, and tried to teach him a language, but he did not learn more than a few
words.
Genie was a girl found in California in 1970. Her father had her isolated in a room.
When she was discovered, she could only understand no more than twenty words.
Some scientists tried to teach her some words. She learnt up to a hundred words, but
she barely talked, and when she did, it was difficult to understand.
Thus, we can say that a child does not learn language from repeating what
somebody says, but it is social interaction what allows a child to learn a language so
as to communicate with their environment.

4. Conclusions
We cannot be sure whether a kid learns a language because of an innate mechanism,
or by imitating what they see or hear, that is to say, what they experience with their
own senses; even though it has been broadly studied by renowned linguists such as
Noah Chomsky.
As we have seen, the development of a language does not depend only in repeating
sounds; it depends also in interacting with the environment and with other people.
Since there are deaf children, and they still interact with the world, we can assume
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that their ability to talk or communicate depends on the social context in which the
child grows. If they grow up isolated from everybody, they would end up not
knowing how to relate or communicate with their fellows: this is the case of wild
children.

5. References
Hoff, Erika. Language Development. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Pub., 1997.
Menyuk, Paula, and Maria Estela Brisk. Language Development and Education:
Children with Varying Language Experiences. Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Mulvaney, Alison. "The Normal Development of Communication Skills." In Look
Who's Talking! How to Help Children with Their Communication Skills, 21-38. 1st
ed. East Roseville, NSW: Simon & Schuster, 1991.
"Language
Acquisition."
Wikipedia.
Accessed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_acquisition.

December

3,

2015.