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Parental Influence on First Language Development

Today, language plays an important role in the development of humanity and it can be defined in various ways, but basically, it is a communication tool that people make through words or signs to express their feelings and thoughts, and it is also an environment that enables communication with other people. From the moment a child is born, he finds himself in the family which is a social environment finds it. Since then, an infant’s language acquisition has started with the voices he heard, the objects he touched, and the things he saw. Therefore, the importance of family is an inevitable fact. I believe that some concepts are related to each other in language acquisition: input-output, cooing-babbling, and reinforcement-punishment.

In the first place, utterances told by family are very significant, because two concepts called input and output are related to the family’s words. In this point, Genie’s case is a good example of this proposition. A girl named Genie was restrained in the basement in November 1970, neither she was exposed to any language nor took any linguistic input until her critical age which is a fixed period from birth to puberty era. Then, the state educates and protects Genie from her family, but after all, she could not get the grammar and spoke like a native speaker. Thus, in language acquisition, it can be observed that a child requires a coaction from someone who is a family member or another language user.

Secondly, during the process of language acquisition, especially in their first year, all infants make ‘cooing and ‘babbling’ notices. Shortly, cooling and babbling are two different basic sounds that refer to sounds like “ooh” and “aah,” and the other sounds are “muh-muh” and “bah-bah.” To speak a language, an infant needs to hear that language being spoken. However, If a child is not exposed to verbal communication and grows up in numerous ways like watching TV, and listening to radio programs, he will not be able to speak or understand that language properly. Overall, only if the child is exposed to verbal and sensory communication methods, can he learn and speak the language being used.

Pursuing this further, another two idioms which are reinforcement and punishment can be handled based on the views of behaviorists such as Skinner and Bloomfield, it is also called “Operant Conditioning.” According to this hypothesis, the child learns a language through reinforcers and Skinner emphasizes that language develops via the use of reinforcement. Moreover, support is given to the child when he uses the correct sentence, but his sentence will be corrected in case he uses the wrong sentence. (it is also called ill-formed) Although there is some linguistics like Chomsky who has an opposing view against Skinner, he states that the child can not learn a language without a verbal environment. Consequently, it has been proven again that family atmosphere facilitates a child’s language acquisition.

All things considered, I agree that in the process of language acquisition, it is a fact that there are a lot of terms that connect each other such as reception-production, vocalization-experimentation, and reward-discipline. Since reception and production are interconnected to family members’ expressions, words spoken by family to their child are important. Throughout the learning language, vocalization and experimentation sounds are made by the child in his first year. Furthermore, reward and discipline concepts indicate that an infant acquires a language via these two principles. Keep in mind that the value of family in the midst of language acquisition is a certain verity.