The objectives of study The object of study Language acquisition is the study of the processes through which human acquire language. By itself, language acquisition refers to first language acquisition, which studies infants' acquisition of their native language, whereas second language acquisition deals with acquisition of additional languages in both children and adults. The secondary objective is to help adults in the villages also to learn and speak English.

Language and communication It is a commonly held view that language evolved as a tool for communication. 1. Human language can be seen primarily as a socially, or culturally determined tool for communication. 2. Alternatively, language can be seen primarily as a cognitive mechanism for structuring utterances and perhaps also thoughts.

Nativist theories —Chomky is the prominent name here—place the distinctiveness of language in specific genetic endowment for a specifically genetically instructed language module. Under that view, there is minimal learning involved in acquiring a language. Empiricists like Hobbes and Locke argued that knowledge emerge ultimately from abstracted sense impressions.

Co-evolutionary theory There are also co-evolutionary proposals: Language is not an instinct and there is no genetically installed linguistic black box in our brains. Language arose slowly through cognitive and cultural inventiveness. Language began as a cognitive adaptation and genetic assimilation. Cognitive effort and genetic assimilation interacted as language and brain co-evolved.

Human language is made possible by special adaptations of the human mind and body that occurred in the course of human evolution, and which are put to use by children in acquiring their mother tongue

A Critical Period for Language Acquisition Critical Period Hypothesis: Exposure to language before puberty is necessary for language acquisition. Children with delayed exposure to language:“The Wild Boy of Aveyron”. Genie Sample utterances by Genie: Mike paint. Applesauce buy store. Small two cup. I like hear music ice cream truck. Think about Mama love Genie.

Pre-Verbal Language Development Crying: Non-linguistic Though some language specific elements. Cooing: Non-linguistic. Exercising the articulatory apparatus. Imitation and the beginning of turn-taking. Babbling: here infants are clearly producing syllable like sounds. No meaning attached to the babble. Syllables are often found in repetitive sequences (babababa). Children clearly utilise their babling to tune their vocalisation to the sounds of the local language. Babbling as part of the biologically determined maturation of language abilities. Babbling drift: Around 9-14 months infants restrict their babbling to native language sounds.