LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Language is the most complex skill that a human being will ever master, is the complete expression of what it means to be human.
Human language involves both receptive and productive use. Receptive language use occurs during the comprehension or understanding of words and sentences. Productive language use involves idea generation and the articulation of words in speech.
Structural components of language:

1.Phonology: The system of the sound segments that humans use to build up words. Each language has a different set of these segments or phonemes.
2.Semantics: The system of meanings that are expressed by words and phrases. In order to serve as a means of communication between people, words must have a shared or conventional meaning.
3.Grammar: The system of rules by which words and phrases are arranged to make meaningful statements.
4.Pragmatics: The system of patterns that determine how humans can use language in particular social settings for particular conversational purposes.
Methods for Studying Language Acquisition
The primary method involves simply recording and transcribing what children say. Using videotape, researchers can link up the child's use of verbal means with their use of gesture and nonlinguistic cries to draw attention to their desires and interests.
Language Development
-Basic level of auditory processing, the infant has a tape recorder in the brain's auditory cortex that records input sounds, replays them, and accustoms the ear to their patterns.
- One of the best predictors of a child's vocabulary development is the amount and diversity of input the child receives.
- language is based on such a wide variety of alternative cognitive skills.
-The basic uses of language are heavily over-determined by this rich system of multiple supports.

Taken from:
http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2153/Language-Acquisition.html