Speech and Language: Its Metalinguistic Shades

We are designed to walk.That we are taught to walk is impossible.

And pretty much the same is true of language. Nobody is taught language.

Noam Chomsky, The Human Language Series Program 2, 1994

A normal human being can go through life even without
learning how to read or write. This has been proved by millions
and this same millions of people speak and understand and
discuss complex or even abstract ideas just as well as those who
are schooled. Learning a language and learning to read and
write are somehow different.
Children have the sensory and motor abilities to produce
and comprehend even in the period of life before language
acquisition occurs. Early exposure to a particular language
produces a "neural commitment" to the acoustic properties of
that language and that this neural commitment interferes with
foreign language processing, making it less efficient.
A string of studies conducted revealed a great deal about
language acquisition, about what a child does and does not do in
the process of acquiring a language. A child learns his words
through committing the sounds in his memory; and by constantly
hearing these sounds as they occur in different sentences.

All children acquire language in the same way, regardless
of what language they use or the number of languages they use.
Acquiring a language is like learning to play a game. Children
must learn the rules of the language game, for example how to
articulate words and how to put them together in ways that are
acceptable to the people around them. In order to understand
child language acquisition, we need to keep two very important
things in mind:
First, children do not use language like adults, because
children are not adults. Acquiring language is a gradual,
lengthy process, and one that involves a lot of apparent
'errors'. But these 'errors' are in fact not errors at all, but
a necessary part of the process of language acquisition. That
is, they should not be corrected, because they will disappear in
time.
Second, children will learn to speak the dialect(s) and
language(s) that are used around them. Children usually begin by
speaking like their parents or caregivers, but once they start
to mix with other children they start to speak like their
friends of their age. The way children speak cannot be
controlled - they will develop their own accents and they will
learn the languages they think they need. If you don't like the
local accent, you'll either have to put up with it or move to

somewhere with an accent you like. On the other hand, if you
don't like your own accent, and prefer the local one, you will
be happy. A child will also learn the local grammar. It might be
judged wrong in school contexts (and all children will have to
learn the standard version in school) but if adults in the
child's community use them, they are not "wrong" in child
language.
Like the rest of us, children are individuals. What
makes them different from adults, as a whole, is that children
are reared in adult worlds according to adult expectations.
Children learn to model their behavior on what goes on around
them, be it dress codes, body language, table manners or
language uses, usually first through their caregivers or parents
and later through peers in their family, neighborhood or school.
That is, children are learning how to function adequately in
their environment, and much of this learning takes place through
language itself. We talk to children to tell them about our
adult world and they learn about the world from what we tell
them. But they also learn about our language, from how we use it
to tell them about other things and most commonly when we answer
their questions. This means that language learning is going on
whenever language is used around children.

Springing from the abovementioned contexts, this study will
present findings (though limited) of a 4 year old boys language
acquired. Implications will also be presented in an attempt to
chain the data on psycholinguistic principles.
Statement of the Problem
This study attempts to capture a description of language
acquired by a 4 year old boy. This description will be on the
following:
1. Grammaticality,
2. Grammatical Categories or Syntactical Categories, and
3. Grammatical Morphemes.

Objectives of the Study
The general objective of the study is to capture a
description of the language acquired by the subject.
Particularly, this study should be able to describe:
a. grammaticality,
b. grammatical categories or syntactical categories, and
c. grammatical morphemes.


Methodology
The researcher based her study on a video recorded language
use of the subject. It was ensured that the recording was in
such a way that the language use was spontaneous while at play
with others about his age. Participant observation was also
utilized.
Dialogs were transcribed or the purpose of description.
Data Presentation and Discussion
This part presents the data gathered backed with related
literature and studies in an attempt to capture a description of
the language acquired by the subject.
Leonard Bloomfield (in 1933) wrote that the acquisition of
language is doubtless the greatest feat any one of us is ever
required to perform. Despite the complexity of the aspects of
language children, before the age of 5 already know most of
the intricate system we have been calling the grammar of a
language. Before they can add 2 + 2, children are conjoining
sentences, asking questions, selecting appropriate pronouns,
negating sentences, forming relative clauses, and using the
syntactic, phonological, morphological, and semantic rules of
the grammar.

Indeed, 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. Linguistic knowledge develops by
stages. Each successive stage more closely approximates the
grammar of the adult language. Observations of children in
different language areas of the world reveal that the stages are
similar, possibly universal. Some of the stages last for a
short time; others remain longer. Some stages may overlap for a
short period, though the transition between stages is often
sudden.
The Intellectual Feat Required
The First Sounds
The stages of language acquisition can be divided into pre-
linguistic and linguistic stages. Most scholars agree that the
earliest cries, whimpers, and cooing noises of the newborn, or
neonate, cannot be considered early language. Such noises are
completely stimulus-controlled; they are the childs involuntary
responses to hunger, discomfort, the desire to be cuddled, or
the feeling of well-being. During the earliest period, the
noises produced by infants in all language communities sound the
same. Children who are born deaf also produce these same
sounds, even though they receive no auditory stimuli.

The Babbling Stage
Usually around the sixth month, the infant begins to
babble. The sounds produced in this period seem to include a
large variety of sounds, many of which do not occur in the
language of the household. Deaf children also babble similar to
that of normal children. Hearing children born of nonspeaking
deaf parents also babble. Therefore, babbling does not depend
on the presence of acoustic, auditory input. During this
period, children learn to maintain the right sounds and
suppress the wrong ones. The pitches, or intonation contours,
of infants utterances begin to resemble the intonation contours
of sentences spoken by adults. However, babbling does not seem
to be a prerequisite for language acquisition. This stage is
therefore pre-linguistic.
The First Words
Varying from child to child and regardless of how
intelligent the child is, sometime after one year children begin
to use the same string of sounds repeatedly to mean the same
thing. Most children seem to go through the one word = one
sentence stage. These one-word sentences are called
holophrastic sentences. At this stage, the child uses only one
word to express concepts or predictions that will later be
expressed by complex phrases and sentences.

Many studies have shown that children in the holophrastic
stage can perceive or comprehend many more phonological
contrasts than they can produce themselves. At this stage
therefore, it is not possible to determine the extent of the
grammar of the child simply by observing speech production.
The Two-Word Stage
The production of two-word utterances occurs around the
time of the second birthday of children. At first these
utterances appear to be strings of two of the childs earlier
holophrastic utterances, each word with its own single-pitch
contour. Soon after this juxtaposition, children begin to form
actual two-word sentences with clean semantic and syntactic
relations. The intonation contour of the two words extends over
the whole utterance rather than being separated by a pause
between the two words. At this stage there are no inflections
for numbers, person, tense, and so on. Pronouns are also rare.
There is no three-word stage.
Supporting the stages of language acquisition are theories
of child language acquisition.
Theories of Child Language Acquisition
Do Children Learn by Imitation?

Various theories have been proposed to explain how children
manage to acquire the adult language. There are those who think
that children merely imitate what they hear. Imitation is
involved to some extent, of course, but the sentences produced
by children show that children are not imitating adult speech.
Even when children are deliberately trying to imitate what
they hear, they are unable to produce sentences that cannot be
generated by their grammar. Neither can the imitation theory
account for another important phenomenon. There are children
who are unable to speak for neurological or physiological
reasons; yet these children learn the language spoken to them
and understand what is said. When they overcome their speech
impairment they immediately use the language for speaking.
Do Children Learn by Reinforcement?
A theory of language acquisition suggests that children
learn to produce correct sentences because they are positively
reinforced when they say something right and negatively
reinforced when they say something wrong. This view assumes
that children are being constantly corrected for using bad
grammar and rewarded when they use good grammar. Studies
report that reinforcement seldom occurs, and when it does, it is
usually incorrect pronunciation or incorrect reporting of facts
that is corrected.

Attempts to correct a childs language seem to be doomed
to fail. Children do not know what they are doing wrong and are
unable to make corrections even when they are pointed out.
The imitation and reinforcement theories fail. Neither
is unable to account for the nonrandom mistakes children make.
It appears that the child is equipped from birth with the neural
prerequisites for language and language use, just as birds are
biologically prewired to learn the songs of their species.
Our linguistic ability permits us to acquire any human language
to which we are exposed. So, children born of Zulu English-
speaking environment will learn English, and vice versa.

Related Studies
A study titled Children and Primary Language Acquisition
conducted by the University of Michigan, Department of
Psychology revealed that fathers tend to play physically with
their boys but talk and otherwise communicate socially and
verbally with their girls, which may contribute to age
differences in language skills.
In another study, Gender Differences in Child Language
Development conducted by researchers from Northwestern
University and Haifa University it was shown that there are

gender differences in brain activity and proposed that
distinctions may date back to early human history. The evidence
of early civilizations indicates that men relied on a limited,
immediate signal to make instant fight-or-flight decisions while
women used context and abstract thinking in decision-making,
skills that are still highly relevant in contemporary culture.
In addition, the study reported that girls experience the
cognitive changes that affect language acquisition at age 14 to
20 months while boys exhibit changes later, between 20 and 24
months of age. This can explain why girls often speak sooner
than boys, use larger vocabularies and speak in multiple-word
sentences or phrases.
From the Australian Council of TESOL Associations in an
International TESOL Conference, a paper titled Understanding
Childrens Language Acquisition was presented. This was
undertaken as a response to the lack of awareness about the
indigenous language situation in Queensland, Australia. Data
were videotaped and samples were transcribed. Semi-structured
interviews were also conducted. The videos show how children
spoke with other indigenous people (peers, staff or family
members) in addition to how they spoke with non-indigenous peers
and staff. It highlighted the differences in the ease of
communication between these interactive situations, as well as

demonstrating that these children are learners of Standard
Australian English (SAE).
The interviews gleaned information about differing language
backgrounds and schooling experiences. Recurring themes
occurred, including the complex history behind the current
language situation; childrens language learning needs not being
recognized or catered for at school; and the need for local
indigenous staff to assist staff who do not speak the same
language as the children. The study forwarded recommendations
including: provision of language aware services to young
children in terms of language acquisition, language situation,
language structure; and multilingualism; understanding, valuing
and using childrens home language/s in educational settings;
and localized trainings for educators and related stakeholders.
It also forwarded three broad goals, i.e. to utilize and develop
their first language; to assist them in learning Standard
Australian English (SAE); and to engage them with the
traditional language/s of their cultural heritage.


Subject

Cyrus Gabriel Adlao Olmedo is a 4-year old boy. Three
adults keep him company during day time and seven adults at
night time. He is exposed to cartoons on television for an
average of three hours per day. The adults keeping him company
speak either the local dialect or Tagalog and intermittent
English.
Cyrus started school at the age of three. At four, he is
enrolled in a nursery class using Tagalog as its medium of
instruction. He is physically active and talkative.

Data Presentation and Discussion
This part of the paper presents the data collected through
video recording (at play time) and observations made on the
subject. Dialogs in the video record were transcribed and
presented below:



Table 1. Data Gathered and Grammaticality
Dialogue Gram
mati
cali
Grammatical/Syntactic
Category

Grammatica
l Morpheme

ty Noun/Pro-noun Verb
1. Sa Toy Kingdom adi...
(This is from the Toy
Kingdom)


C
Toy
Kingdom
Adi

Number
Inflect
ion

2. Angry Bird yan na
green
(That is a green angry
bird)
C
Angry
Bird
Yan

Number
Inflect
ions

3. Waya na..isa
yang..nagsasakaynagsasa
kay..
(No more..only one..riding
riding)


C
Isa Nagsa
sakay
Time
Inflect
ion
4. One, two, three ..
andito na
(One, two, three.. its
here)
C
One, Two,
Three
andito

Number
Inflect
ion
5. Hindi naka-closenaka-
open
(Its not closed.. its
open)
C
(naka)-
close
(naka)-
open

Derivat
ive (?)
6. Ayaw koayaw ko..
(I dont like.. I dont
like..)
C
Ko Ayaw Person
Number
7. San ang yeyo angry bird
ko?
(Wheres my yellow angry
bird?)
C
Angry
Bird
Ko
San

Number
Person
8. Ano yon nahuyog?
(What has fallen?)
C
Nahuy
og
Time
9. Di ba may guitar ikaw?
Don sa bahay?
(Is it not that you have a
guitar? There in the
house..)
Inc
Guitar
Ikaw
Don
Bahay

Number
Person
10. Sige na, hindi man
ikaw nagmo-move
(Come on, youre not
moving..)
C
Ikaw
Nagm
o-
move
Number
Person
Time
11. Mata ko ikaw next
time..
Inc
Ko/ Ikaw

Mata
Number
Person

(Ill wake you up next
time..)
Time
12. Kasi stuff toy yang
yandi ba? Stuff toy
yang yan Yeyo sya tas
yeyo Sponge Bob
(Because its just a stu
toy, isnt it?..its a stu
toy..its yellow and yellow
stuu toy)
C
12. Uy, meron ako sig-sine
(Hey, I have something like
this..)
C
13. Sabi ko nga sayo
kakareach ko yan.hindi
ikaw kay kaka-reach ko
ya Ha, ano?
(As I have told you, I can
reach it.. not you because
I can reach it..ha, what?)
C
14. Uy, sa yabas yang ako
mag-motor cross..
(Hey, Ill play motor cross
outside..)
C
15. 15. Uy, diba dayawa sa
imo?tas dayawa sa
akon?
(Hey, you have two, right..
and I have two also..)
C
16. Wag yan kasi hindi sya
taga-dyan kay red
(Not there because hes not
rom there because hes
red..)
C
17. Hindi, kasi hindi ikaw
boysgirl ikaw
(No, because youre not
boys youre a girl..)
C
18. Uy, sino nag-bite?
Ayoko yan
(Hey, who bit this? I dont
like that..)
C
19. Pag-naubos ko na
adimaghingi
ikaw..
Inc

(I I inish this.. you
ask..)
20. Wag lang mga adikasi
natutuyog
(Not these because they are
sleeping..)
C
21. Waya pa sip-onpag
hiccups hindi
mawara yan..
(No cold yet.. when you
hiccups..it will not
disappear..)
Inc
No, ayoko!
(No, I dont like..)
C
Yehey! Sasakay sya. Uy,
mga toys. I-park toy kay
sayi sira dinah..hahapa-
backwards ganito yan!!!
(Yehey, hes going to
ride..Hey, toys..Park the
toy because they are in
alsoah..haha..it should be
backwards..like this..)
Inc
Ako si Mr. Pogiano man
ikaw na gusto mo pa-yayk
(like)..
(I am Mr. Pogi..what about
you..what do you like..)
Inc
I-picture mo na..kaiha
mani-picture mo na
kamitapos mag picture
video na agad
(You take the picture..its
taking long to take the
picture o us..ater the
picture ..take the video
immediately..)
C
Patay na yong monsterpag-
punta sa akin ng monster
ma-roar ako..rooaarrr!
(The monster is dead..i the
monster comes to me Ill
roar.. rooaarr!)
C

Anong movie yan? Bakit may
heart man?
(What movie is that? Why
does it have a heart?)
C
Movie
Yan
Heart
Number
Ako na winako na win!!!
(I win.. I win..!!)
Inc
Ako Na-
win
Number
Person
Time

From the transcribed dialogues, it is shown that the 4-year
old subject utilizes six general functions of language and these
are the: instrumental, regulatory, representational,
interactional, personal and heuristic functions.
It also appears that with the mean length of utterances
(MLU) not lesser than five (5) morphemes on average the
subject is at the stage of grammar acquisition. It is observed
however, that connectors are still missing in several of the
string of utterances (25, 26, 27, 28, 31 and 33). But
basically, word order is acceptable.
Declarative sentences are well in order (e.g. 1, 2,
6, 9 and 18) and so are the interrogative ones (9, 11, 12, 22,
25 and 34).
Ninorte-Samarnon utterances were limited to dialogues:
1 adi (this), 3 - nagsasakay, (riding) 4 - nagsasakay
(riding), 13 man (emphatic expression), nagmo-move (moving),
16 - sig-sine (like this), 22 - imo (yours), 25 nag-bite
(bit), 26 adi (this), 27 adi (this), 28 sip-on (cold), 30

sira (they), and 31 man (emphatic expression) or
particularly only the demonstrative: this singular near the
speaker, pronouns : yours (possessive) and they 3
rd
person
plural, sip-on noun; verbs: riding and moving
progressive; the emphatic expression man; and the prefix nag
in verbs. The subject is poor in his native tongue (L1); and
conversant in Tagalog (L2).
The occurrence of English words is more numerous than the
native tongue. These are found in dialogues: 1 Toy Kingdom
(proper noun), 2 - Angry Bird (proper noun) & green (noun), 5 -
one, two, three (nouns), 7 - close and open (used as
modifiers), 9 - Angry Bird (Proper noun), 11 guitar (noun), 13
- move (verb), 14 next time (temporal signal), 15 - stuff toy
(noun) and Sponge Bob (proper noun), 17 - reach (verb), 23
motor cross (noun), 24 boys and girl (nouns), 25 bite
(verb), 28 hiccups (noun), 30 toys (noun), (i)-park (verb),
(pa)-backwards (adverb), 31 like (verb), 32 (i)-picture and
(i)-video (verbs), 33 monster (noun) and (ma)-roar (verb), and
35 - (na)-win (verb). Most of the words are nouns and verbs.
On estimate, most of the utterances are Tagalog (L2), next
are utterances in English (Target Language) and last are
utterances in the native tongue (L1)).

Indeed, children learn to construct sentences, most of
which they have never produced before. Children learn to
understand sentences they have never heard before; they
construct the rules that permit them to use the language
creatively and no one teaches them these rules. Their parents
are no more aware of the phonological, syntactic, and semantic
rules than are children.
Conclusions
The following are conclusions:
1. The subject is at the stage of grammar acquisition. This is
evidenced by the declarative and interrogative dialogues where
word order is correct. This may be considered an advance feature in
the language acquisition stage of a 4-year old boy.
2. Six general functions of language were evidenced. These are:
instrumental, representational, regulatory, interactional,
heuristic and personal functions.


3. Connectives were found missing in few dialogues; and is
therefore a deficit.

4. Inflections (number and tense) are not yet established. This
is also a deficit.
5. The subject is conversant in Tagalog (L2) which is the
medium of instruction.

Implications to Teaching Language in Pre-School
Implications include:
1. The non-utilization and development of the first language in
educational settings may hamper the learning capability of the
pupils as they progress to higher grades with the implementation
of K2 12 program of the Department of Education.
2. The conclusions forwarded imply the valuing and engaging of
childrens home language in the classroom situation.












References
Language Acquisition, Chapter 10. Introduction to Language
Gender Differences in Child Language Development.
http://www.ehow.com/list 6122997

Children and Primary Language Acquisition.
http://www.ehow.com/list html1#ixzz29F6HK9Q

Australian Council of TESOL Associations International TESOL Conference:
Understanding Childrens Language Acquisition. July 10, 2012 Goid Coast Queensland.
Denise Angelo, Sophie McIntosh and Nina Carter (Central, South and North
Queensland Schooling Support Unit DET (Qld)

Applied Linguistics for Communication Arts. Tayao, Ma. Lourdes et al., 1997. UP-OU.