Acquisition: During the first two or three years of development, a child requires interaction with other-language users in order to learn a particular language such as English. Meanwhile, there is also an entertaining instance: the deaf parents had a normal-hearing son, and he was substantially exposed to television and radio programs. However, it is noted that the boy did not acquire an ability to speak or understand English. So, we might as well assume that the interaction and communication with other language-users is closely tied to the first language acquisition.

Language is not inherited by our parents, but is acquired in a particular language-using environment.

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Input: human infants are certainly helped by the typical behaviors of older children and parents in a particular language-using environment who provide language samples. It is called input. It is probably inappropriate for human infants to acquire language on the basis of adult conversational mode, although they may learn some new words. So, we’d better adopt a new speech mode, with the frequent use of questions, exaggerated intonation, extra loudness and a slower tempo. It is known as caregiver speech. For example, choo-choo, poo-poo…There are some features about this speech-it assigns an interactive role to the young child and consists of simple sentence structures.

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The acquisition schedule of all normal children has the same basis with biologically determined development of motor skills, sitting up, crawling, standing, walking, using the hands and many other activities. It is also true of the acquisition schedule, cooing and babbling. the one-word stage. the two-word stage, the telegraphic stage, and so on. Besides, this biological schedule is closely tied to the development of the infant’s brain. There is substantial variation among children, although some particular features of linguistic development are presented by the certain age.

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Cooing: during the first few months of life, the child gradually becomes capable of producing vowel-like sounds such as [i] and [u]. By four months of development, the ability to bring the back of the tongue into regular contact with the back of the palate allows the infant to create the velar consonants such as [k] and [g]. By the age of five months, babies can discriminate between the vowels [i] and [a].

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Babbling: in the babbling stage, the child is sitting up and can produce a number of vowel and consonant sounds, as well as the combination of the consonant and the vowel such as ba-ba-ba and ga-ga-ga. Meanwhile, nasal sounds are very common in this stage. About the tenth and eleventh months, the child can use his or her vocalizations to express emotion and emphasis.

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The one-word stage, is also referring to as the holophrastic stage. Between twelve and eighteen months, children begin to use single-unit utterances. Single-unit utterance is not simply referring to as a single word such as milk, cookie and cup. In effect, it is a general term, and consists of a phrase or a sentence. However, the child still cannot put forms together to produce a more complex phrase or sentence.

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The two-word stage: Around eighteen and twenty months, children can put two distinct words together to utter their emotion and emphasis. By the age of two years old, their vocabulary is beyond fifty words, and they gradually confirm their utterance worked as a contribution to the interaction.

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The telegraphic stage: Around two and two-and-a-half years old, children begin producing a larger number of utterances. Meanwhile, a lot of lexical morphemes are used in phrases or sentences. Children clearly develop language-building capacity and can get the word order correct; besides, their vocabulary is expanding rapidly and, they begin imitating more talk with the increased physical activities such as running and jumping.

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For children, the acquisition process is not simply “being taught the language”, or not imitating adult speech. Because parent may have not sufficient time to teach them how to pronounce each word accurately, and sometimes children create a totally new word. In effect, the acquisition of process is the actual sound and word combinations, either in interaction with others or in word play.

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Developing morphology: by two-and-a-half years old, the vocabulary is expanding rapidly; besides many inflectional forms are largely occurred in children’s utterance. The first to appear is usually the -ing form in expressions such as cat sitting. Sometimes, children know the specific rule of language, but the rule is overused in all circumstances. That is called overgeneration. For example, the child overgeneralizes apparent rule of adding -s to form plurals such as foots and mans. Not long after, the use of possessive inflection –’s occurs in expressions such as girl’s dog. At the same time, different forms of the verb “to be” begin to be used.

After the age of four, children can work out which forms are regular and which are not.

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Developing syntax: generally speaking, children not necessarily imitate adult syntactic structures but have their own way of expressing it. In forming questions, the child’s first stage comprises the addition of a Wh- form and the rising tone at the end of sentence. In the second stage, Wh- forms are largely used in the question, and the rising tone is still alive. In the third stage, it consists of the movement of the auxiliary, and questions are generally close to the adult model. In the forming negatives, the child’s first stage is to add No or Not at the beginning of sentences. In the second stage, No or Not is used in the front of the verb rather than at the beginning of the sentence. In the final stage, the combination of the auxiliary and Not such as won’t occurs in the child’s speech. Meanwhile, the negative form isn’t is used soon. As a result, negatives are generally close to the adult model.

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Developing semantics: By the holophrastic stage, children usually use their limited vocabulary to refer to a large number of unrelated objects in terms of similarities of shape, sound and size. It is called overextension. For example, children are inclined to use the word “apple” to refer to all round objects, including the moon, a doorknob and a ball. Although overextension has been well-documented in children’s speech production but it isn’t necessarily used in speech comprehension. The acquisition of antonymous relations is fairly late. A larger number of kindergarten children usually disregard the antonymous markers such as more, less, most and worst in the interaction.

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By the age of five, children has completed the great part of the first language acquisition.