The Syntactic Development of Child
Language Acquisition
1. INTRODUCTION
The study of a child’s acquisition of the English language over his/her early years involves the research of
a methodology to understand and predict the structural development of a child’s language
development. People who are already interested in children, be it natural parents or pre-school
teachers, are often said to take an interest in this subject, due to their already acquired friendliness and
familiarity with children in their early years of life. It is to be understood that syntactic development
includes the structural analysis of child language only, and not foreign subjects like the clarity of speech
or pronunciation. While the latter studies often accompany the former, the two aren’t overlapping in
any manner. The structural analysis consists of, among other things, the phonetic assessment of the
different vocal sounds a child can produce, and the phonological assessment of these sounds being
combined into more complex speech patterns. In order to understand syntactic development, the
understanding of three basic terms is necessary:



Morphology: The branch of grammar that dedicates itself to the study of the structure and form
of words, through the use of morpheme construction.
Syntax: The study of the various rules implied in the combination of several words to form full
sentences.
Morpheme: A unit of meaning in morphology, not necessarily related to syllable or word counts.
E.g. Happy (One Morpheme), Happier (Two Morphemes), Unhappily (Three Morphemes).
In this paper, we are going to study the syntactic development of child language acquisition amongst
children aged 18 months to five years. We are going to learn how these children familiarize themselves
with the various words and sentences in the English language, while structurally analyzing the same.
Table 1: Counting Morphemes
The
girl
s
mother slow
ly
fill
ed
the
bucket with
water
1
2
3
4
6
7
8
9
10
12
5
11
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
First language acquisition is a subject that has been studied upon for years in all parts of the world. A
mother is excited to hear her child speak for the first time, she observes patiently and proudly as her
child slowly develops the ability to utter meaningless noises, then simple words and finally, full blown
phrases and even sentences. Watching a child progress in his or her acquisition of the English Language
is both thrilling and exciting. The role played by a child’s mother, and in later years, the pre-school
teacher, is absolutely crucial to this subject. Depending on a child’s interaction with their
parents/teachers, they learn new words, their meanings and how to use them successfully in normal
conversation.
It is a rather interesting spectacle to observe a child develop from meaningless babbling to forming their
very first meaningful chunks of words, morphemes and phrases to communicate with those that
surround (Foster-Cohen 2009). The relationship between the child and its mother is very crucial in the
acquisition of first language. Lieven says that the conversations held between mother and child happen
differently for every child-mother pair and has significant effects on how the acquisition varies (1978).
An entirely different perspective, however, states that a child’s language acquisition betters as their
organs develop, as first acquisition is a biological procedure more than a social one (Yule 1996).
Before the 1950’s, all study on child acquisition was confined to a few linguistic scholars studying their
own children. “At one time, it was believed that children learned language by simply imitating the
speech of those around them” (O’Grady, Dobrovolsky and Aronoff). Since then, the learning of child
language acquisition changed rapidly, especially after Chomsky presented his theory of there being an
innate biological system of learning language in every child. Linguists now began to see their children as
“creators of interesting and systematic language, rather than as imperfect imitators of adult speech”.
With the introduction of tape-recording, more linguists began to obtain and study records of children
speaking language, and the study of child acquisition received a huge boost. The learnings of the
acquisition of language in a child has improved greatly in the last 50 years.
Dr. Barbara Lust from the Cornell University’s Cornell’s Language Acquisition Lab (CLAL) recently
conducted a study in 2006; her findings were captured in her book Child Language: Acquisition and
Growth. Some of the major findings in her study have been summarized below:

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Soon after birth, even before the acquisition of language in any form, children begin to process a
speech stream in order to study phonology and syntax around them. Soon after, they begin to
demonstrate some form of semantics or understanding of the meanings of the language spoken
around them.
As children learn their first words and begin to construct simple sentences, they will
demonstrate an agility in understanding the complex knowledge of semantics. They will avoid
random errors and even be able to understand possible multiple meanings within the same
words and sentences in language.
By the time they reach three, children will have learned most of the basics of language
acquisition and be able to understand language quite fluently.
Children sometimes show a tendency to make some common errors in language, for example,
calling all fruits and vegetables “apples”, instead of calling them by their specific names.
However, these errors only proceed to demonstrate their creativity of mind and their ability to
be abstract and categorical in the learning of their first language.
Through these studies, it is clearly observable the child acquisition is a sensitive and delicate procedure.
It is also rather difficult to study, as children need to be observed in their natural state, rather than being
interrogated out front on what they know and what they don’t. Experiments and studies on child
acquisition are generally conducted on a longitudinal basis and a cross-sectional basis. Longitudinally,
each child is observed over a period of several years to see how they acquire language. Crosssectionally, a group of children are observed at a certain point of time to see how they interact through
the English language. This way, each child is studied singularly and in groups, both in short and longterm bases.
3. THE ACQUISTION OF LANGUAGE IN A CHILD
Child Language Acquisition is a rather interesting subject, applicable not only in linguistics but also in
early childhood education programs. Teachers have made good use of child acquisition to help children
better learn the English Language. As the understanding of child acquisition has improved over the
years, more and more attention has been allotted to the subject. There are a large number of
theoretical perspectives as to how a child acquires their first language. Broadly, these can be categorized
into behavioristic, innatist and interactional perspectives.



Behavioristic Perspective: This perspective states that language is learned through imitation,
practice and “positive reinforcement” from the environment. According to this theory, children
learn language as they attempt to imitate the adults in vocal mechanics and receive
encouragement from their environment for the same. Thus begins the correlation of words with
meanings and the understanding of language. This theory, however, has a few loopholes. First,
children only imitate what they have previously heard, “input”. Further, they often utter words
and phrases on their own, something which they have not heard any adults around them use.
Innatist Perspective: According to Chomsky, language is an innate ability that grows as a
biological organ, and requires only a little bit of environmental interaction to develop. This
theory basically attempts to fill the gap in the behavioristic perspective, by announcing that a
child learns language as an innate ability rather than an environmental result, independent of
the input they receive. Even innatists, however, must admit that some form of interaction with
the outer world is required for the children to acquire language in any form or shape.
Interactional/Developmental Perspective: Piaget and Vygotsky state that children acquire
language through interaction with people and objects, as a cognitive development procedure.
This is the interactional perspective. The importance of interaction in language acquisition has
been highlighted in study after study. In one such case, a boy with deaf parents was left with
nothing but a television as a source to learn English. Obviously, his language skills were poor,
and only after he began interacting with another person in the real world did he acquire English
as well as he should have (Sachs, Bard & Johnson 1981).
Child acquisition begins at the very first point a child learns to create their first sound, crying. It starts at
birth and continues all the way through his growing years till he has been accustomed with the basics of
their first language. There are several stages in this, starting with crying and emitting other physical
noises like breathing, burping, etc., followed by a lot of babbling, then comes the first words, the ability
to associate two words at a time, being able to pair multiple words meaningful into a semi-sentence,
and, finally, full blown understanding of the basics of language. Despite the several perspectives on first
language acquisition, all experts can agree that the acquisition of first language occurs through four
primary stages:


The Pre-Language State: This phase is marked by a lot of cooing and babbling and signifies the
beginning of the acquisition of language in a child. Around three months of age, a child begins
cooing, uttering velar consonants and high vowels. This is followed by meaningless babbling
from around six months of age.
The Holophrastic Stage: In between the ages of twelve and eighteen months begins the oneword of holophrastic stage. During this phase, a child learns to utter simple one or two-syllable
words such as “milk” and “eat”.
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
The Two-Word Stage: This begins around eighteen and twenty months once the child’s
vocabulary has superseded 50 words. The child learns to pair words together into meaningful
phrases, such as “daddy eat”, “mommy sing” and so forth.
The Telegraphic Speech Stage: This stage occurs before a child turns three, where the child
learns to link words together into neo-sentences in the right order. This stage proceeds into the
final stage where a child fully acquires language and learns to speak in an orderly manner.
As the child acquires language for the first time, different stages of acquisition focus on various different
areas of language. As a scholar, one may choose to focus on a particular language area for study and
leave out the rest:
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Semantics: Semantics refers to a child’s usage of the right words at the right time for them to
make sense and be meaningful beyond just an utterance. When focusing on semantics, scholar
determines which words can be associated or linked together and which ones can’t. For
example, “bread” can be linked with “taste” and “knife can be linked with “sharp”.
Phonology: Phonology refers to the sound patterns that help diversify a language. Each human is
provided with a vocal tract based on their gender and body structure, hence there can be
different ways to pronounce the same word. Phonology helps us study and understand the
diversity in sound patterns in terms of articulation in a child’s language acquisition procedure.
Syntax: Syntax refers to the organization and structural disposition of the various components of
a sentence. The literal meaning of the word “syntax” is “arrangement”. The study of syntax
ensues when a child learns to speak its first words and continues up till when they can construct
entire sentences through the weaving of different words and phrases.
Table 2: Child Language Acquisition
Operations
Instances
Intents
Nomination
That car
That is a car.
Recurrence
More juice
Give me more juice.
Negation
No wee wee
I did not do a wee wee.
Negation
No more
I don't want any more.
Negation
Birdie go
The bird has gone.
Once infants are born, their body parts are highly fragile, delicate and underdeveloped. While human
children fully develop their hearing only halfway through pregnancy, the eyesight and control over facial
muscles come with maturation. Once born, the only form of sound children know to produce is crying.
Through crying, they seek attention, make known their needs, and express discomfort and so forth.
Other sounds they produce during this stage are largely vegetative, such as breathing, gasping, yawning
and so forth.
At around three months of age, children gain significant control over their vocal cords and learn to
produce their first few sounds. Most of their utterances during this period is through cooing and
laughing. They now have enough control over their facial muscles and can smile as well as laugh. They
can also emit high pitched noises and minor screams as a show of enthusiasm as well as discomfort.
Next, a child learns to speak their first words. This happens at about twelve months of age. The child can
now utter simple words like “mamma” and “papa”. They learn to single out words of importance and
use just those in order to communicate their feelings. They are able to do this despite the fact that
adults around them, however, speak in full sentences. It is said that the children learn to single out
words depending on the effort an adult around them puts on a single word. For example, when a child
wants to say “I want food”, all he says is “food”, thereby communicating his need without the use of a
complex linguistic mechanism.
Learning new words is a rather slow procedure, where a child learns a new word only about once a
week. But after a child reaches eighteen months, the vocabulary starts multiplying rapidly. The child
acquires more and more words within a shorter span of time, speeding up the procedure of language
acquisition. The speed now increases to ten-twelve words a day (O'Grady, Dobrovolsky and Aronoff
371). This is called a “vocabulary spurt”.
During this period, children understand more complex sounds then they are able to produce. While they
may limit themselves to one-word utterances only, they already understand full sentences. Their
comprehension of words is thus much greater than their utterance of the same.
A few months after they turn eighteen, children first learn to link two words into a neo-phrase, creating
utterances such as “mommy cookie” or “daddy go”. While their pronunciation is not as improved as
others, and they can often make obvious mistakes, such as saying “doggie” while pointing at a horse and
so forth, this is one of the most crucial phases of first language acquisition, as a child learns what a
language is for the first time in its life.
By the time children reach the age of two, their way of speaking resembles that of a telegraph, i.e.,
“send money car broke”, etc. Children can now associate multiple words together, much more than just
two, and can more or less grasp the concept of sentences. Although they may not be perfect in their use
of articles, prepositions, etc., they do learn to communicate in simple language quite well.
This is followed by the final stage of first language acquisition. When a child is about 3 years old, it learns
to speak full sentences in a way similar to an adult. It learns to speak simple sentences, such as “Give me
a cookie“ or “Daddy went home” , with ease.
Thus end the procedure of child language acquisition, as the child now masters their mother tongue
similar to the way any adult would, learning more complex words, sentences, prepositions, pronouns,
articles and so forth.
4. CONCLUSION
The aim of this study was to study the procedure of first language acquisition in children aged 0-3 years.
In that course we learned of the various perspectives to first language acquisition, behaviorist, innatist
and interactional. We learned how each of these perspectives differ, and how each of them is correct in
its own way. Then we went through the four stages of first language acquisition in children, the prelanguage state, the holophrastic state, the two-word stage and the telegraphic speech stage. We
learned how each of these stages help in a child’s acquisition of its first language, and we learned how
the procedure of language acquisition occurs in a child stage after stage. We then learned the different
areas of language explored in the study of first language acquisition, namely semantics, phonology and
syntax. We learned how each stage of child language acquisition focuses on each of these areas of
language, and how a linguist can selectively study only one of these areas of language acquisition while
effectively omitting the rest. We then proceeded to study the actual procedure of first language
acquisition as it occurs in a child, from its first cry to the age of three years. We studied how a child
develops from the stage of crying to cooing, to babbling, to first words, to two-word utterances to
telegraphic speech and finally to full-blown sentence construction. We also learned how each off these
phases are vital to the acquisition of first language, and how the procedure of child language acquisition
takes place differently in different children.
Indeed, the study of first language acquisition is a rather delicate procedure. Not only is it difficult to
study as a child is observed through his or her growing ages and studied based on how he or she
masters language, it is also a procedure that differs largely from child to child. No wonder, a large
number of theories and perspectives exist pertaining to first language acquisition, each trying its best to
cover a certain angle in child acquisition. Child language acquisition is not only delicate, unique and ever
so adventurous, it is also very much practically applicable and useful when it comes to early childhood
education. The understanding of child language acquisition enables linguists to develop a course of
study in language suited to the needs of each child, helping it get better in English language through its
growing phases. The understanding of first language acquisition helps cater to a child’s needs in learning
a new language, and helping it get better at it without effort and hard work. The understanding of this
subject is going to serve very well in educating children in their earlier ages, no doubt it has been so
widely researched.
5. REFERENCES
BOWEN, CAROLINE. 2011. Brown's Stages of Syntactic and Morphological Development. Online:
http://www.speech-languagetherapy.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=33:brown&catid=2:uncategorised&Item
id=117.
THURESSON, JANI. 2011. The syntactic development in the earlier stages of children’s first language
acquisition. Online: http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:480083/fulltext01.
GALASSO, JOSEPH. 2015. Remarks on a Minimalist Approach to Early Child Syntax. Online:
https://www.academia.edu/15157172/Remarks_on_a_Minimalist_Approach_to_Early_Child_Syntax.
WHELPTON, MATTHEW. 2014. First Language Acquisition: The rate and style of vocabulary growth in the
first years. Online: file:///C:/Users/princepetropia/Downloads/Documents/BA_Essay.pdf.