Language Acquisition

Child language acquisition. Three little words. So let's take them once at a time. Child. When do you start being a child? For many people, language acquisition starts at round about 12 months when kids say their first word. But don't forget the first year. That first year of life is very important as well. And indeed, before you're born, remember, there are a couple of months before you're born when you're actually able to perceive in the womb something of the language that's around you. So language acquisition starts earlier than most people think. And it also ends later than most people think. When does child language acquisition stop? Well, in a sense, you know, we're all children. We stay being children all our lives. There's no obvious end point for learning sounds, of course there is, and for learning grammar there is, but vocabulary. Well, I mean, that goes on for the rest of our lives. There's a million or more words in English, and most of us only have a vocabulary of 50, 60, 70 ,000 words or whatever it is. And so there's always something more to learn. So remember that the two ends of child language acquisition are wider apart than some people think. And that means there's more scope for studying it than most people think.