“FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION”

(This Task to Fullfill Group 4 Assignment)

Lecture : Yani Lubis, S.Ag, M.Hum

Compiled by :

Arma Suryati NIM. 0304161036

Dimas Agung Suwardi NIM. 0304163192

Jesi Suryani Sitorus NIM. 0304162085

M. Danil Harahap NIM. 0304161042

Misbah Hayati Siregar NIM. 0304162031

Siti aisyah NIM. 0304161008

Yupi Yana Munthe NIM. 0304162132

Zumarni Septania Limbong NIM. 0304161037

ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTEMENT

FACULTY OF TARBIYAH AND TEACHING TRAINING

STATE ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY OF NORTH SUMATRA

2019
 PREFACE

All praise to Allah SWT, by His forever mercies and blessing enable
the writers completed the work in the form of a paper on “First Language
Acquisition”. Peace and salutation be upon to our prophet Muhammad
SAW, his family, his companion, and his followers.
The writers sincerely hope that this paper will be useful in order to
increase our knowledge as well as our insights on Psycholinguistic course.
The writers are fully aware that in this paper there are shortcomings and
far from perfect words. Therefore, the writers accept criticism and
suggestions for the improvement of the papers we have made in the
future, given that nothing is perfect without constructive suggestions.
Hopefully this simple paper can be understood for anyone who
reads it. If this paper has been prepared it can be useful for us or the
people who read it. Previously, we apologize if there are many errors of
words that are less favorable and we ask for constructive criticisms and
suggestions from the readers for the improvement of this paper in the
future.

Jazakumullahkhairankatsiran.

Medan, December 2019

Group 4
 CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1 The Background of Study

Language acquisition is one of the most fascinating facets of

human development. Children acquire knowledge of the language or
languages around them in a relatively brief time, and with little apparent
effort. This could not be possible without two crucial ingredients, which we
discuss in the first two sections of this chapter: a biologically based
predisposition to acquire language, and experience with language in the
environment. All children pass through similar stages of linguistic
development.1 language acquisition has a close connection with the
human ability to create the perception and understanding the speech of
others. Moreover, a child is able to produce speech or speech if he knows
the rules derived from childhood.2 The term of language acquisition is
same with language development, so that it can be said as process of
language development by children or human.

In this paper we will describe and explain about first language

acquisition. First language acquisition and second language acquisition
are part of Language acquisition, it is can be said as L1 and L2. Before we
study about second language acquisition, we must know about first
language acquisition, because the theories or study about second
language acquisition comes from first language acquisition.

1.2 The Formulation of study

1 Eva M. Fernandez and Helen Smith Cairns, Fundamental of Psycholinguistics,

(UK: Willey Blackwell, 2011), P. 97

2 Soenjono Dardjowidjojo, Pengantar Pemahaman Bahasa Manusia, (Jakarta:

Yayasan Obor Indonesia, 2010), p. 225.

 Based on the background of problem above, the formulation of the
problem are:

1) What is First Language Acquisition?

2) How is the development/stages of Language Acquisition?
1.3 The Objective of Study

Based on the formulation of problem above, the objective of the

study are:

1) To know the theories of First Language Acquisition.

2) To know the developmnet/stages of First Language Acquisition.
 CHAPTER II

DISCUSSION

2.1 First Language Acquisition

Language acquisition is the process whereby children acquire their

first languages. All humans (without exceptional physical or mental
disabilities) have an innate capability to acquire language. Children may
acquire one or more first languages. For example, children who grow up in
an environment in which only English is spoken and heard will acquire
only English as their first language. Acquisition occurs passively and
unconsciously through implicit learning. In other words, children do not
need explicit instruction to learn their first languages but rather seem to
just "pick up" language in the same way they learn to roll over, crawl, and
walk. Language acquisition in children just seems to happen.3 For first
language, a child acquires the mother tongue naturally, gradually,
automatically and unknowingly but he does not learn it. There is no formal
teaching for acquiring the first language.4

Language acquisition by children is a skill that has fascinated

linguists and psychologists for a long period of time. The language
structure is a complex one and acquiring such complex system by children
not long after birth is a mystery. The way that infants learn language with
remarkable ease and speed makes it an interesting case of study (Lust,
2006). Children who are acquiring their first language do not reproduce
their parents’ language exactly. The way that children so quickly and
successfully acquire language has interested people for thousands of
years. Because of the richness and complexity of this system, it seems
unbelievable that children could ever acquire its structure.The most
important question in most of the studies done on child language

3 Lova Khrisna Ganji, dkk. “First Language Acquisition and Second Learning”,

IJELLH Journal Vol. V (VI) June 2017, p. 821.

4 Ibid., p. 822
acquisition involves finding out what types of mechanisms underlie the
acquisition of human language system. The human language system is a
wonderful one. The process of acquiring such a system is likely to be
nearly as complex as the system itself, so it is not surprising that the
mechanisms underlying language acquisition are a matter of long-standing
research.5
Parents do not teach the native language to their children formally.
Although they may try to reinforce their child‟s verbal behavior with smiles
or other ways or through the gap between their mature linguistic
competence and the child‟s beginning by means of “baby talk”. But there
is no particular reason to believe that such ability appears on the child‟s
final achievement in becoming a native speaker of his parents‟ language;
children can pick up a language like playing a game with other children to
extend their language abilities. The specific environmental factors that
make it possible for language acquisition to occur, but the primary element
would appear to be merely sufficient exposure to language use in a social
context. Children seem to learn language they way they learn to walk.
They learn thousands of words, complex phonological and grammatical
structures, semantic and pragmatic relations. As Fromkin said that we do
not enter the world before we are able to stand and walk, but all normal
children begin to do so at around the same age. No one teaches them to
walk. Obviously “learning to walk” or learning language is different than
“learning to read” or “learning to ride a bicycle.”6

Language acquisition is the process whereby children achieve a fluent

control of their native language. Children learn a language, not because
they are subjected to a similar conditioning process, but because they
posses an inborn capacity which permits them to acquire a language as a
normalmaturational process. This capacity is universal. The child has an
5 Mehry Haddad Narafshan, “First Language Acquisition by Infants” , Journal of

Advances in English Language Teaching Vol. 1 (2) 2013, p. 59

6 Victoria Fromkin, An Introduction to Language.Third Edition.(New York. CBS

College Publishing, 1983), p. 4-5

innate language acquiring device. He learns a language by exposure to it
in society and by unconsciously forming certain hypothesis about
language, which he goes on modifying till he comes to the adult model to
which he is for the most part exposed. So the child goes on constructing
an innate grammar, operating over generalized rules. The capacity for
acquiring language is remarkable a number of reasons. 7

It is first because of its uniformity throughout the human race. There

simply are no cases of normal human children who, given the chance, fail
to acquire a native language. The ability of children at such young age to
form complex rules, to construct the grammars of spoken and sign
languages, and to do in such a relatively short time is indeed phenomenal.
The fact that the stages through which a child learns a language of
different nations reveals interesting aspects of the acquisition process.8
From this, we know that it is impossible that the child passing suddenly
from one stage to another. In addition to that, as universal there are some
stages in acquiring the native language. They are the cooing stage, the
babbling stage, the holophrastic stage, the two word stage, and the
telegraph stage. Children do not wake up one morning with a fully formed
grammar in their heads or with all the “rules” of social and communicative
intercourse. The language is acquired by the stages, and, it is suggested,
every successive stage more closely near to the grammar of the adult
language. Observations ofchildren in different language areas of the world
reveal that the stages are very similar, possibly universal. Some of the
stages may overlap for a short period, though the transition between
stages has been observed to quite sudden. In acquiring the language,
there must be some problems to develop children language in every stage
has mentioned above. So the writer is interested so much to write this
research to find out the problems and to know how the children acquire

7 Ronald W. Lanagacker, Language and its Structure: Some Fundamental

Linguistic Concepts, (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), p. 12-13

8 Victroia Fromkin, An Introduction to Language..., p. 341.
the first language based on linguistics features, they are syntax, semantic
and pragmatic.9

Differences between the first language acquisition and second

language Learning:10

No. First Language (L1) Second Languae (L2)

1 Subconscious Process Purely conscious Process

2 Informal Activity Formal activity

3 Uses Grammatica “feel” Uses grammatical rules

4 Dependens on attitude Depends on aptitude

5 Stable order of acquisition Simple to complex order of

learning

2.2 Stages in First Language Acquisition

When human are born, he does not have suddenly the grammatical
of his first language in his brain and completely with its rules. The native
language is acquired through some stages, and every stage is passed
near to adult’s language. There are six stages in children‟s first language
acquisition, namely:

1. Pre-talking stage / Cooing (0-6 months)

According to Bolinger pre-talking stage or cooing is the vowel-like

sound responding to human sounds more definitely, turns head, eyes
seem to search for speaker occasionally some chuckling sounds. For

9 Jean Berko Gleason and Nan Bernstein Ratner, Psycholinguistics. Second

Edition. United States of America. (Harcourt Brace College Publisher, 1998), p. 22

10 Lova Khrisna Ganji, dkk. “First Language Acquisition and Second Learning”,

IJELLH Journal Vol. V (VI) June 2017, p. 822

example, Miles (at the age of 4 months) demonstrating the cooing stage of
language acquisition. He is producing vowel-like sounds (especially, the
back vowels [u] and [o])in the sounds of “oh”, “uh”, and “ah”, typical of
"cooing".He still finds difficulties in producing the vowel sound [i] except
when he is screaming in “hiii”. Moreover in producing the consonant
sounds like [b], [p], or [m], she is not able to produce them yet.11

2. Babbling stage (6-8 months)

Babbling is the sounds which infants produce as consonant-vowel

combinations. The sounds which are produced by infants but not all the
speech sounds are same in language of the world such as [ma-ma-ma] or
[da-da-da] and [ba-ba-ba] or [na-na-na].12

3. Holophrastic stage (9-18 months)

Fromkin defined holophrastic from holo “complete” or “undivided”

plus phrase “phrase” or “sentence”. So holophrastic is the children‟s first
single word which represent to a sentence. Children using one word to
express particular emotional state. For example, Debby‟s mother recorded
the words she had pronounced during the 8 months after the appearance
of her first word at 9 months (this was [adi], used both for her
"daddy")During the two weeks from 17 months - 17 months and a half, she
more than doubled her vocabulary.13

4. The two-word stage (18-24 months)

Two-word stage is the mini sentences with simple semantic relations.

As Fromkin states that children begin to form actual two-word sentences,
with the relations between the two words showing definite syntactic and
semantic relations and the intonation contour of the two words extending

11 Dwight Bolinger and Donald A. Sears, Aspect of Language, (San Diego, US:
Harcourt College Pub, 1981), p. 283
12 Danny D. Steinberg and Natalia V. Sciarini, An Introduction to Psycholinguistic,

( UK: Pearson Education Limited, 2006), p. 147

13 Victroia Fromkin, An Introduction to Language...,p. 328.
over the whole utterance rather than being separated by a pause between
the two words. The following “dialogue” illustrates the kinds of patterns
that are found in the children‟s utterances at this stage. Basically, a child
at this age is already able to produce the consonant sounds like [j], [p], [b],
[d], [t], [m], and [n].14

5. Telegraphic stage (24-30 months)

Telegraphic is merely a descriptive term because the child does not

deliberately leave out the non-content words, as does an adult sending a
telegram. When the child begins to produce utterances that ere longer
than two words, these utterances appear to be “sentence-like”; they have
hierarchical, constituent structures similar to the syntactic structures found
in the sentences produced by adult grammar.15

6. Later multiword stage (30+months)

At this stage is fastest increase in vocabulary with many new

additions everyday; no babbling at all; utterances have communicative
intent. There is a great variation among children, seems to understand
everything said within hearing and directed to them.16

14 Ibid., p. 329
15 Ibid., p. 330

16 Sadia Nasrin, First Language Acquisition:Grammar in the Speech of A Two-

Year Old Bangladeshi Child, BRAC University Journal Vol. V (2) 2008, p. 121
 CHAPTER III

CONCLUSION

3.1 Conclusion

Language acquisition is the process whereby children acquire their first

languages. All humans (without exceptional physical or mental disabilities)
have an innate capability to acquire language. Children may acquire one
or more first languages. The language is acquired by the stages, and, it is
suggested, every successive stage more closely near to the grammar of
the adult language. Observations ofchildren in different language areas of
the world reveal that the stages are very similar, possibly universal.

3.2 Suggestion

From the expalantion above, we hope that this paper can be use as
study/ learning about “First Language Acquisition”.
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