‘‘bot. ‘‘Notice that the ‘‘p’’ and the ‘‘b’’ are both
sounds made with closed lips. Thus, they are easily
confused. Or children might simplify the word
‘‘bread’’ into ‘‘bed’’ and ‘‘spill’’ into ‘‘pill.’’ Sometimes
they also get the stresses and accents correct but fail
to accurately reproduce the adult target. Words such
as ‘‘Sleeping Buddha’’ for ‘‘Sleeping Beauty ‘‘and
‘‘vampire’’ for ‘‘umpire’’ in the opening examples of
this article provide some sense of these errors of ‘‘as-
similation.’’
Language Delay
As with speech/articulation problems, language
delay represents another cause for concern for some
parents. Many have heard the story of the child who
says nothing until his third birthday and then, when
sitting at dinner, asks for a fork in perfect English.
When asked why he hadn’t said anything before, the
child said, ‘‘Up to now, everything has been perfect!’’
This joke is not far off the mark.
There are two forms of language delay. Some
children understand everything but just do not talk.
These children are not of real concern to parents. On
the other hand, for some children, language develop-
ment is not merely hidden from view but may not be
progressing on course. Since the late 1990s there
have been major developments in distinguishing be-
tween these two types of language delay. Parents seem
to know the difference. They can often tell when chil-
dren understand language and when they do not. If
the child has not said even a few words by eighteen
months or has not put two words together by twenty-
four months, the parents should consider taking the
child to a speech therapist. The child’s hearing is the
first thing that should be tested.
Stuttering
As with language delay and articulation, stutter-
ing has both a common form and a more clinical
form. Many parents find that at around age two, their
children seem to stutter. They have a great deal to say
and are not yet proficient at getting their message
out. The result is a kind of verbal logjam. Children
start a sentence, stop, flounder for a bit, and then
start again. This is all quite normal and usually passes
over the course of the next couple of months. By three
years of age, speech therapists take stuttering more
seriously. Stuttering runs in families and is more
prevalent among boys than girls. Several cautionary
notes are raised by speech therapists with regard to
stuttering. First, if the child is stuttering at age two or
two-and-a-half, it is important to not make a point of
it. One should just slow down the rate of the conversa-
tion and proceed as if nothing has gone wrong.
Bringing stuttering to the child’s attention can often
exacerbate the condition. Second, if the child of
around age three is stuttering and the parent sees the
child trying to inhibit the stuttering by making jerky
motions with the hands or blinking the eyes while
speaking, a speech therapist should be consulted.Explaining Language Development
As noted earlier, language proceeds on a com-
mon course for most children. In fact, the weight of
the scientific evidence supports the view that children
are prewired to learn language. This strong view,
however, leaves one pondering the role of input—the
language that children are exposed to. Does parental
input make no difference in the language develop-
ment of the child? Can therapists make any difference
in correcting language problems if things go awry? A
brief review of the role of input in language will help
set the record straight and will also provide some feel
for the theoretical landscape that guides research in
the field of language acquisition at the beginning of
the twenty-first century.
First and foremost, it is known that language
input must make some difference because all children
do not speak the same language. French children will
learn French, and Chinese children will learn Chi-
nese. Thus, whatever is built in must be ‘‘just enough’’
to allow children to learn any language and not so
much to determine the particular language a child
will learn. That input makes some difference is there-
fore a given. What has been debated, however, is
whether this input serves as a trigger for language de-
velopment or as a mold. On the side of the trigger
theories, researchers find that parents do not actively
‘‘teach’’ their children grammar. No parent would
ever utter the sentence ‘‘I goed to the potty.’’ Yet most
parents are overjoyed when they hear this from the
child. They do not stop to suggest that the sentence
should be ‘‘You WENT to the potty.’’
There is also mounting evidence for those
who believe that parents mold language in children.
Though parents do not teach children grammar, they
do teach children when to say their ‘‘pleases’’ and
‘‘thank yous.’’ Further, it is widely accepted that par-
ents who talk more with their children have children
who learn more words and use grammar earlier.
Input becomes apparent in the limited, but real, indi-
vidual differences in language development between
children.
Language development is the product of an inter-
active and dynamic system that has components of in-
stinct and of input—of nature and of nurture. The
human mind must be built so that young learners se-
lectively attend to certain parts of the input and not
to others. With respect to sounds, infants must recog-
nize that the sounds of language are different thanLANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT 231