The development of language in the human being
Talking about language moves us to other concepts that are in close relationship. If we join the language with the language and speech we are creating an intentional process of transmission of information that is communication.
All this immerses us to the wonderful world of language, so we will define some concepts to better understand language development.
Bloom and Lahey (1978) define the language "as a code that allows to represent ideas about the world using an arbitrary system of signs for communication". Once language defined, the next step is language and speech. Language is the form of communication and verbal expression that the human being uses through speech, using words to give meaning and meaning creating an intentional communication to transmit the information. Be they feelings, emotions, thoughts, etc., through sounds, signs, gestures, etc. It is a phenomenon that allows us a personal, cultural and social development by making us know multiple variables such as;Neurological, sensory, motor, etc. Therefore, its evolution in the different stages of development is essential and necessary. Speech is what distinguishes us from another species and thus makes human communication complex, being the act of transmitting and receiving the message.
Therefore, the interaction of the human being with its environment is important, where it lives, grows and develops together with the innate and acquired factors for language learning. So much so that we can differentiate moments in the development of language where they are acquired, interrelatedly. There are four different components of language: phonological, morphosyntactic, semantic and pragmatic. The phonological component has to do with pronunciation, the articulation, the relationship of the sounds of the language, the rules to combine them forming the words giving them accentuation and intonation. The semantic component refers to the meaning of words and their combinations, acquired vocabulary and the ability to understand words or phrases. The morphosyntactic component is the mastery of morphemes and the knowledge of the rules to unite words within the prayer for their organization and composition inside. And finally, the pragmatic component allows us to adapt the use of language for each situation, it depends on the context in which we meet, whether social, situational or communicative. You don’t talk the same with a friend who with a teacher.
We will take advantage of this work to be able to address how the development of language components is produced and better understand oral language at certain ages in childhood.
Phonological development begins at birth with the first sounds and evolving to 6 or 7 years. From birth the child is trained to reproduce all sounds, they are able to discriminate the phonemes. To be able to emit their first words they have to distinguish the sounds of language. It is important to distinguish between perception and production of speech, knowing that phonological development is not homogeneous in all children, because it is subject to the diversity of each of them. In perception babies with more or less a month of life can recognize intonation and basic sounds that correspond to their language. In production, it should be distinguished that from birth the baby emits cries, noises, screams, etc., that depending on tone we can know if they are annoying or happy. At 3 months they broad. Between 8 and 9 months the protocabras appears, specific to each child, because what they try is to attract attention or ask for something. At 12 months the first words appear, acquiring about 50 words between 12 and 18 months. The child evolves in his language development, thus between 18 months and 4 years the communication becomes richer and more complex. However, they do not stop having some difficulties in maintain.
Communication is getting more and more complex, so the child uses phonological strategies to simplify words and reproduce them more easily. Being able to highlight: the substitutions of the sounds that are difficult to articulate by more simple ones (p.eg. lelo per clock), progressive assimilations, where the previous phoneme influences the posterior (P.eg. elephant elephant), regressive assimilations, where the posterior phoneme influences the previous one (P.eg. Bobo by balloon), simplifications in the syllabic structure;consonant omission at the beginning (P. eg. done pink) or at the end (p. eg. pencil pencil), omission of syllable (p. eg. Melo by caramel), reduction of diphthongs (P. eg. have for), elimination of consonant groups (p.eg. Ten by train) or investment or insertion of sounds.
From 18 months the child begins to unite two words to express and make sense of his ideas, the combination of morphology and syntax occurs, giving rise to a minimal grammatical organization. Brown (1973) distinguished five stages in morphosyntactic development: stage of the linear semantic rules (18-24 months), the child combines two words to express his ideas. Morphosyntactic development stage (30 months), where they build phrases of three elements: agent+action+object;Use the adverbs of place, the pronouns of first and second person and the gender and number markers with errors. Form development stage (31-36 months), determinants, time and aspect morphemes appear, interrogative, imperative and negative phrases. At 36 months, coordinated sentences, certain articles, gender and number, auxiliary verbs, adverbs and personal and possessive pronouns arise. ELEMENT INCRUSTATION STAGE (36-42 months), subordinate sentences appear with but or because, they correctly use the verb to be and have, the times, people and verbal modes. It is more frequent to use adverbs and prepositions and still make regularization mistakes that will disappear. CLAUSE UNION STAGE (36-42 months), is characterized by the formation of compound sentences. Subordinate sentences appear, correctly use the verbs in the present, past and future, the complexity of the affirmative, interrogative and negative sentences grows. A progressive elimination of syntactic and morphological errors occurs.
In order to make sense of all of the above, we must talk about semantic development, because it will be responsible for giving meaning to words and prayers. Therefore, we must distinguish in semantic development between understanding and production. Understanding is the ability to recognize words and remember objects. In production it is important that the child remember the word and its meaning. To make sense of the capacity for understanding Monfort and Juarez (1989) they refer to the following: At 12 months the child includes 3 words, between 12 and 20 months the number of words are 20, at 24 months about 250 words, at 36 months he learns a word every day, and at 5 and 6 years about 3.000 words.
Pérez Pereira (2001) in relation to production highlights three important moments: between 0 and 15 months the vocabulary does not exceed 10 words, between 15 and 19 months they reach 50 words, at 2 years they reach 450 words andso on reaching the 12 years where they have progressively acquired prepositions, adverbs, pronouns, kinship relationships, temporary terms, use of synonyms, antonyms, words of words, etc. thus improving the understanding of meaning. To get to this they have made mistakes along the way, such as infraextension, which uses the word for a specific context or object or overextension, which generalizes the characteristic features of a concept or the like. But there is no doubt that the greater the interaction between the environmental, social and linguistic context in which the child lives and develops concerns and activities, the greater their learning in the development of communication and language.
Finally, we cannot forget the pragmatic development, since language needs to be used properly knowing linguistic rules, having knowledge about the interlocutor, context and the use of language. From the age of 2, the child uses the language to perform requests, express their wishes, name objects, share situations, maintain small dialogues, until they develop the basic ability to talk. The conversation capacity makes them value as they respect the intervention shift, initiate and maintain a conversation issue and adapt to the participants. At first, communication occurs with one or two people in a balanced way to maintain a dialogue which is capable of starting, maintaining and closing.
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