What is still ‘boohij’ to your brother of over one and a half years old, is simply a ‘farm’ to your three-year-old niece. There is barely a year and a half difference in age between these two children, but there is a huge difference in knowledge of the mother tongue and its expression. In a year or two your brother will be about as far along as your niece is now. He has then entered a different phase of the language acquisition process. Of course, your niece has also moved on to another phase. Does this transition from phase to phase continue indefinitely? No, not that. What phases does the language acquisition process consist of?
Language acquisition in general
So children acquire language. The language acquisition process starts immediately after birth and ends around the age of nine. This period, namely the one within which the language must be learned, is called the critical period. The critical period can be divided into four phases: the pre-language period, the early language period, the differentiation phase and the completion phase. Each phase is characterized by a number of new skills and grammatical developments for the child.
The pre-lingual phase
From birth to approximately one year of age, a child is in the prelingual phase. In the first weeks after birth, the child mainly becomes familiar with sounds from his or her environment. A little later, the acquisition of phonological skills also starts. Children then learn to recognize the sound structure of their native language. Very important here are the speech contrasts that are important in their native language. Children also learn to pronounce the sounds they hear. During the prelingual period, the child also starts combining sounds. At the end of the prelingual period, the child has entered the babbling phase. Sometimes it seems as if the child is already pronouncing real words and some sounds already have a clear meaning. At this stage the child is no longer just a listener: he or she becomes increasingly involved in conversations.
The Early Language Period
The prelingual period is followed by the early linguistic period. This period runs from approximately the first year to the age of two years and six months. The sound combinations from the babbling phase slowly change into real words, to which the child also begins to assign a meaning. We call these semantic skills. During the first few months the child only uses single words. This period is also called the one-word phase. Words that the child speaks first often relate to things that are often said or seen. You can think of words such as mom, ball and no. Because the child still cannot say too much, non-verbal behavior will still play a major role during this period. A second type of skills that the child acquires in the early language period are syntactic skills. Syntactic skills mean that a child combines words and applies rules. During this period, more and more short sentences are formed. The child may still make many mistakes in conjugating and inflecting words, but the sentences are already formed according to the rules of the mother tongue!
The differentiation phase
By the time the child becomes really well understood, he or she ends up in the differentiation phase. The differentiation phase runs from the age of two years and six months to approximately the fifth year of life. In this phase, grammatical development gains momentum. The child increasingly experiments with verbs and arrives at constructions that are grammatically correct. In addition, the vocabulary increases enormously during this period and the articulation and pronunciation of words continues to improve. Difficult letters such as r and s are becoming increasingly clear. Furthermore, during this period the child acquires morphological skills and the development of metalinguistic awareness begins. Morphological skills mean that children learn to make compounds and conjugate verbs. Metalinguistic means that the child starts thinking about language and can judge the correctness of a sentence.
The completion phase
The final stage of the language acquisition process is the completion stage. This phase takes place from the fifth to the ninth year. At the entrance to this phase, almost all skills are present. Some are still being acquired and the others are being improved. The vocabulary is expanding enormously, parts of speech are being learned and the conjugation of verbs has already come a long way. Because the child also learns to read and write during this period, metalinguistic awareness develops strongly during this period. There has also been a major development in the social field. At the end of the completion phase, the child has acquired enough knowledge and insight to create good, logical sentences. The language diploma has been obtained!
To conclude
In short: the period during which children learn language is also called the critical period. This period can be divided into four periods, namely the pre-language period, the early language period, the differentiation phase and the completion phase. At the end of the completion stage, the child is able to form correct sentences. This does not mean that mistakes are no longer made. The funny mistakes of the past are turning more and more into stupid mistakes!