Monday, 20 February 2012

How do humans learn language

How do humans learn language?

-When do we start learning language?

-What are some features of child language?



Humans are developing their understanding of language everyday by the age of 5 a child knows around 5000 words, and a further 2000 words each year afterwards. But when do we start learning these words?

Scientists have been conducting experiments on newborn babies by monitoring the activity of the baby’s brain when it is exposed to words spoken by a computer, their mother and a stranger. This experiment showed that the baby responded only to their mother’s voice, this proved that the baby had been learning to speak while in the womb.

When a child is born it is constantly learning the vital skills of speech, they start out by making simple sounds trying to imitate the words of the parents. An example of this is the child trying to learn the word water. The child attempts to say water and says gaga, then the child begins to make to word sound more and more like water such as, waga, wawa, wadder, and then finally the child would pronounce the word water.

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