- "Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language, as well as to produce and use words and sentences to communicate."
The study of how humans acquire language, from infancy to adulthood.
Language Development: The study of how children acquire language and the different stages of language development that they pass through.
Bilingualism: The study of how people learn two or more languages, the cognitive implications of bilingualism and the effect of bilingualism on language acquisition.
Language Processing: The study of how the brain processes language, the cognitive mechanisms involved and the factors that influence language processing.
Language Production: The study of how speech is produced, the physiological mechanisms involved, and the factors that influence language production.
Phonology: The study of the sound patterns in language, the different phonetic systems and the various ways in which languages use sounds to convey meaning.
Morphology: The study of how words are constructed in language, the principles of word formation and the various structures that words can have.
Syntax: The study of sentence structure and how words are combined to form meaningful utterances.
Semantics: The study of meaning in language, the different levels of meaning and how meaning is conveyed through language.
Pragmatics: The study of how language is used in context, the social conventions of language use and the different functions of language in communication.
Language Disorders: The study of language impairments, the causes and effects of language disorders and the different approaches to treating them.
First Language Acquisition: This is the natural process of learning one's first language, usually during childhood.
Second Language Acquisition: This is the process of learning a second language, typically as an adult or in school.
Foreign Language Acquisition: This is a subcategory of second language acquisition, where the language being learned is not spoken as a primary language in the learner's community or country.
Bilingual Acquisition: This is the process of learning two languages simultaneously, or learning a second language while maintaining proficiency in one's first language.
Heritage Language Acquisition: This is the process of learning a language that is part of one's cultural or familial heritage.
Simultaneous Language Acquisition: This is the process of learning two languages at the same time from infancy, often in bilingual or multilingual households.
Sequential Language Acquisition: This is the process of learning one language first, followed by the learning of a second language.
Cognitive Language Acquisition: This is the process of how the brain processes language, including grammar, syntax, and vocabulary.
Socio-cultural Language Acquisition: This is the process of learning language in a social and cultural context, including language use in different settings, and social norms around language use.
Emotional Language Acquisition: This is the process of learning emotional expressions and understanding emotional language in one's first language and subsequent languages.
Implicit Language Acquisition: This is the process of acquiring language unconsciously, through exposure and immersion in a language-rich environment.
Explicit Language Acquisition: This is the process of learning language consciously, through formal instruction, study, and practice.
Natural Language Acquisition: This is the process of acquiring language in a natural setting, such as through interaction with native speakers or immersion in a language in a natural environment.
Artificial Language Acquisition: This is the process of learning a constructed or artificial language, such as Esperanto or Klingon.
Sign Language Acquisition: This is the process of learning a sign language, such as American Sign Language, which involves using gestures and facial expressions rather than spoken language.
- "The capacity to use language successfully requires one to acquire a range of tools including phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and an extensive vocabulary."
- "Human language capacity is represented in the brain."
- "Even though human language capacity is finite, one can say and understand an infinite number of sentences, which is based on a syntactic principle called recursion."
- "These three mechanisms are: relativization, complementation, and coordination."
- "Speech perception always precedes speech production, and the gradually evolving system by which a child learns a language is built up one step at a time."
- "The distinction between individual phonemes is the initial step in language acquisition."
- "Language acquisition usually refers to first-language acquisition, which studies infants' acquisition of their native language, whether that be spoken language or signed language."
- "It refers to an infant's simultaneous acquisition of two native languages."
- "First-language acquisition deals with the acquisition of the native language, while second-language acquisition involves acquiring additional languages."
- "In addition to speech, reading, and writing a language with an entirely different script compounds the complexities of true foreign language literacy."
- "Linguists who are interested in child language acquisition have for many years questioned how language is acquired."
- "The question of how these structures are acquired, then, is more properly understood as the question of how a learner takes the surface forms in the input and converts them into abstract linguistic rules and representations."
- "Language acquisition involves structures, rules, and representation."
- "Language can be vocalized as in speech, or manual as in sign."
- "Language acquisition involves acquiring phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and an extensive vocabulary."
- "Even though human language capacity is finite, one can say and understand an infinite number of sentences."
- "These three mechanisms are: relativization, complementation, and coordination."
- "Speech perception always precedes speech production in first-language acquisition."
- "Language acquisition is one of the quintessential human traits."