sst-0576

Child language acquisition, three little words. So let’s take them on at a time. Child, when to start being a child? For many people, language acquisition starts around about twelve months when kids say that first word, but don’t forget the first year. At the first year, our first year of life is very important as well and indeed before you are born, remember there are couple of months before you are born, when you actually able to perceive in the womb, something of the language that’s around you. So language acquisition starts earlier than most people think. And it also ends later than most people think. When does child language acquisition stop? Well, in a sense, you know, we are all children, we stay being children all in our lives. There is no obvious endpoint for learning sounds, of course, there is for learning grammar, there is for vocabulary, huh. I mean that goes on for the rest of our lives in million or more words in English. Most of us only have a vocabulary of 50, 60, 70 thousand words, whatever it is until there is always something to learn. So remember that two ends of child language acquisition are wider apart than some people think. That means there is more scope for studying in it than most people think.

Child language acquisition begins earlier than commonly believed, starting even in the womb and continuing beyond the first spoken word at around twelve months. Language learning doesn’t have a clear endpoint; while grammar and vocabulary development do taper off, the process of learning remains ongoing throughout life. This broad timeframe allows for extensive study of language acquisition.