The document discusses theories of language acquisition in children. It describes how children learn the major aspects of language like grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation in their first five years without formal education by being exposed to a language-rich environment. Two main theories discussed are the behaviorist theory, which claims that children learn through imitation and reinforcement, and the creative construction theory, which argues that children have an innate ability to acquire language and create new utterances. While both theories try to explain the process of language acquisition, each has weaknesses and the exact process is still being studied by linguists and researchers.

1. Presented by
Dammar Singh Saud

2. Introduction
In the first five year period, children learn all the major
aspects of language like grammar, vocabulary and
pronunciation that are necessary to speak and
understand their first language. We generally acquire
our first language naturally without any formal
education in that period. According to linguists, every
child can acquire his/her first language if they are
exposed to a language friendly environment regardless
their intellectual or socioeconomic differences.

3. Goals and Methods
Like all sciences, the study of language acquisition
tries to describes and explain how children acquire
their native language. Identification of problem,
hypothesis formation on the basis of theories,
hypothesis testing by experiments and observation
and hypothesis confirmation or modification are the
stages of methods of the study of language acquisition.

4. Goals and Methods
In experimenting with how language acquisition
takes place among children, developmental
psycholinguistics develops hypothesis from
theories and tests them empirically. The real
utterances produced by children in natural
environment are grouped for sample data, and
they are thoroughly studied.

5. Children's English and the Development of Grammar
Children learn the English grammar systematically
but different from adults. They, at this early stage of
learning their first language, mostly use content
words such as nouns, verbs and adjectives, and
systematically omit function words such as auxiliary
verbs, articles, prepositions and pronouns. They have
creative ability to produce utterances according to
their own system of rule.

6. Children's English and the Development of Grammar
They are also good at generalization of grammatical
rules which they apply in other situations.
For example:
Bag – Bags, Ball – Balls etc. (Regular Plural)
Foot – Foots, Mouse – Mouses etc. (Generalization of
Grammatical Rules)
Foot – Feet, Mouse – Mice etc. (Irregular Plural)

7. Caregiver Language
The language used by the caregiver of the child from
its birth to the age of five is often termed as Child
Directed Speech (CDS). The child's caregiver
systematically use CDS, and their language has more
nouns than pronouns and speak about topics directly
related to the physical surrounding of the interaction.

8. Caregiver Language
They also use simple vocabulary and grammatical
forms that the child can understand. Generally,
caregivers do not correct mistakes in children's
grammar and pronunciation because children are
reluctant to correct their error.

9. Theories of Language Acquisition
The major concept of the theory of language
acquisition are as follows:
Children create original linguistic forms that are not
present in their linguistic environments.
Children utterances are rule-governed.
Children are not good conscious imitator of grammar
or phonology.

10. Theories of Language Acquisition
Children's speech grows in phonological and
grammatical complexity until it matches the speech
of their community.
Caregivers generally do not correct phonological and
grammatical errors in children's developing English.
Caregivers respond positively to children's attempts
to communicate even though the utterances are often
linguistically incorrect.

11. Behaviorist Theory
Behaviorist Theory and Creative Construction
Theory have tried to explain the process of the
language acquisition. Behaviorist theory or
imitation-reinforcement theory (IR-Theory)
claims that children learn a language through
imitation and reinforcement. In other words, children
are rewarded when they use correct forms of language
and given correction when they make a linguistic
errors.

12. Behaviorist Theory
But this theory cannot explain why children create new
utterances instead of imitating adult speech. Similarly,
it also fails to explain how children's utterances are
rule-governed. Studies have shown that children are
good creators but bad imitators of language.
Therefore, behaviorist theory cannot explain how the
child really acquires his/her mother tongue.

13. Creative Construction Theory
Unlike IR-Theory, Creative Construction
Theory believes that the children are excellent
creators of new utterances that they have never
heard before. This theory argues that every child
is born with an innate capacity to acquire his/her
first language.

14. Creative Construction Theory
The child's innate capacity starts to work as
he/she is exposed to meaningful environment. As
the child grows, it helps the child to add
complexity to his rules very similar to the adult's
speech. Although CC theory is more adequate
than the IR-Theory, the CC theory is also not free
from some weaknesses.

15. Conclusion
In conclusion, many language acquisition
theorists and researchers are still trying to
address how language acquisition process
takes place.

16. Thank You!