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Language is a system of symbols and rules that is used for meaningful communication. Language is a fundamental aspect of human cognition, acting as a shared system of communication that allows individuals to convey thoughts, ideas, and emotions. Language and communication play crucial roles in shaping behavior and mental processes by providing the tools for thought, social interaction, and cultural transmission. Language also shapes how people perceive reality by framing experiences and organizing thought, a concept known as linguistic relativity.
A system of communication has to meet certain criteria in order to be considered a language:
A language uses symbols, which are sounds, gestures, or written characters that represent objects, actions, events, and ideas. Symbols enable people to refer to objects that are in another place or events that occurred at a different time.
A language is meaningful and therefore can be understood by other users of that language.
A language is generative, which means that the symbols of a language can be combined to produce an infinite number of messages.
A language has rules that govern how symbols can be arranged. These rules allow people to understand messages in that language even if they have never encountered those messages before.
The Building Blocks of Language
Language is organized hierarchically, from phonemes to morphemes to phrases and sentences that communicate meaning.
Phonemes are the smallest units of sound in a language that matter for distinguishing one word from another. In the English language, many consonants, such as t, p, and m, correspond to single phonemes, while other consonants, such as c and g, can correspond to more than one phoneme. Vowels typically correspond to more than one phoneme. For example, o corresponds to different phonemes depending on whether it is pronounced as in bone or woman. Some phonemes correspond to combinations of consonants, such as ch, sh, and th. Phonemes are crucial for speech perception and production, influencing how individuals learn to differentiate sounds and develop pronunciation skills.
Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units in a language. In the English language, only a few single letters, such as I and a, are morphemes. Morphemes are usually whole words or meaningful parts of words, such as prefixes, suffixes, and word stems. For instance, the word “disliked” has three morphemes: “dis,” “lik,” and “ed.” In this example, “dis” acts as the prefix, “like” acts as the stem, and “ed” acts as the suffix. Morphemes contribute to the construction of language and enable people to build and understand complex words and sentences. For example, adding the morpheme -s to cat creates cats, changing the meaning to indicate plurality.
Semantics
Semantics refers to the rules that govern the meanings of words and sentences. The rules enable individuals to understand and interpret the relationships between words and how their meanings change in different contexts. For instance, the word bank can refer to a financial institution or the side of a river, depending on the context. Semantics is essential for comprehension and meaning-making, affecting how people process language and draw inferences. Semantic processing influences memory, as individuals rely on meaningful associations to encode and recall information.
Grammar and Syntax
Grammar is the comprehensive set of rules that govern how language works. It dictates how words and morphemes can be combined to create sentences and includes everything that pertains to structure and function of words and sentences, including:
Morphology: the formation of words (e.g., prefixes, suffixes, stems)
Syntax: how words are arranged to create phrases and sentences
Semantics: the meanings of words and sentences
Phonology and phonetics: the sounds of a language (though these are more relevant to spoken language.
Syntax, a subset of grammar, is a system of rules that governs how words can be meaningfully arranged to form phrases and sentences. For example, one rule of syntax is that an article such as “the” must come before a noun, not after: “Read the book,” not “Read book the.” It dictates the order and structure of words to ensure that sentences make sense.
Language Development in Children
Language development is a universal process that follows the same sequence of stages across all cultures. From infancy, humans begin with nonverbal communication and gradually build formal language skills through predictable developmental milestones. This progression includes early gestures, sounds, and specific stages, each contributing to a child’s ability to communicate effectively. Children develop language in a set sequence of stages, although sometimes particular skills develop at slightly different ages.
Early Nonverbal Communication
Before formal language emerges, infants use nonverbal manual gestures to express their needs and to interact with others. Pointing, waving, and other hand movements are among the first forms of communication that bridge the gap between nonverbal cues and spoken language. In fact, sign language can be taught to young children before spoken language. These gestures help infants convey intentions and begin to coordinate shared attention with their caregivers.
Stages of Language Development
Language development occurs in a series of stages that are remarkably consistent across different cultures and languages:
Prelinguistic (cooing) – around two to three months: Infants start by making cooing sounds, which are typically vowel-like and involve repetitive, melodic noises. This stage marks the beginning of vocal experimentation and lays the groundwork for future speech. During this stage, sound production is limited, due to the fact that an infant’s vocal tract is not yet fully developed. Though the cooing sounds made are initially involuntary, infants can soon produce cooing sounds intentionally, starting around two months of age. Three-month-old infants can distinguish between the phonemes from any language.
Babbling – around six months: As infants grow, they begin to produce more complex sounds known as babbling, which combine consonants with vowels (e.g., “ba-ba,” “da-da”). This stage is crucial for developing the physical and cognitive abilities needed for speech, as it helps babies practice using their vocal apparatus and refine their listening skills. As time goes on, these sounds begin to resemble more closely the words of the languages the infant hears.
First-Words Stage (holophrastic stage) – around 12 to 18 months: This stage may also come sooner, overlapping somewhat with the babbling stage. During this stage, children will speak their first words, often referencing familiar objects, people, or needs, such as “mama,” “dada,” or “ball.” Additionally, children start using single words to represent entire phrases or ideas (e.g., “milk” to mean “I want milk”). These words are often simple and refer to familiar objects or people. This stage demonstrates the initial ability to connect words to meanings and reflects a growing vocabulary.
Two-Word Stage – around 18 to 24 months: During this stage, children start combining two words to form simple phrases like “want cookie” or “mommy go.” These combinations show an early understanding of syntax, and children are able to convey more complex ideas than they can with single words.
Telegraphic Stage: By about 24 months, children begin to combine two or three words to make short sentences. At this stage, their speech is usually telegraphic. Telegraphic speech, like telegrams, contains no articles or prepositions. Although these sentences lack certain grammatical elements, such as articles and auxiliary verbs, they communicate clear meanings. This stage is named for its resemblance to the concise language used in telegrams, focusing only on the most important words. Examples: “tractor move dirt,” “fork no work.”
By about age three, children can usually use tenses and plurals. Children’s language abilities continue to grow throughout the school-age years. They become able to recognize ambiguity and sarcasm in language and to use metaphors and puns. These abilities arise from metalinguistic awareness, or the capacity to think about how language is used.
Language Errors
As children acquire language, they often make predictable errors. A common example is overgeneralization, where children apply language rules too broadly. For instance, after learning that adding “-ed” makes a verb past tense, a child might say “goed” instead of “went,” or when learning that adding an -s makes a word plural, a child might say “foots” instead of “feet.” These errors demonstrate that learners are actively engaging with and internalizing the structure of the language as they try to apply regular patterns to all instances. Overgeneralization is typical in language development, and it reflects the learner’s attempt to form rules rather than memorizing isolated words. Thus these errors actually demonstrate the child’s growing understanding of grammar. Overgeneralization also happens with individuals learning a second language who tend to apply patterns from their native language or overapply the rules of the new language. This process is a natural and essential part of learning. It helps the learner test, refine, and eventually master the grammatical rules of a language.
