Chapter 11: Child Language Acquisition
- Page ID
- 192723
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When you’ve completed this chapter, you’ll be able to:
- Identify children’s typical language development milestones.
- Interpret data from various experimental methods to draw conclusions about children’s mental grammar.
- Explain how development in signed language parallels that of spoken language in an accessible language environment.
- Discuss some of the benefits of acquiring more than one language.
This chapter looks at how children develop the various components of mental grammar: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. As we’ll see, children’s minds are equipped to acquire grammar very quickly as long as they have other language users to observe.