CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
This chapter presents background
of the study, problem statements, objectives of the study, originality and
significance of the study, and operational definition of the key terms.
A. Background of the Study Human grows and
learns through communication. Language, in such context, is the most perfect
way to communicate. That is why “Language is fundamentally an instrument of
communication. People talk as a way of conveying ideas to others-of getting
than to grasp new facts, answer questions, register promises, and so forth. A
language has not only a structure but also a function to which that structure
is put”.
Children acquire and learn language from birth
and it will gradually develop. Children learn language behavior quite early in
life, and verbal behavior is, of all behavior probably the most resistant to
the effects of sentility, drugs, and abnormal mental states. To be sure,
language behavior has its complexity, but this is mostly because it is an
aggregiation of numerous simple things. The phases of child language
development also have traditionally attracted most attention of linguists,
psychologists, and educators Herbert H.
Clark and Eve V. Clark, Psychology and Language: an Introduction to Psycholinguistics,
Washington, D.C.: Harcout Brace Jovanovich, Inc, 1977, pp 7 because
of the complexity of language and the apparent ease and swiftness of learning.
There are theoretical approaches to child
language acquisition. Each theory emphasize on certain aspects of language
acquisition. The theories are therefore, still competing and debatable. The
theories in brief and as follows: First, the Cognitive theory of Jean Piaget. A
child first becomes aware of a concept, such as relative size, and only
afterward do they acquire the words and patterns to convey that concept.
Second, the behaviorist’s point
of view by B. F. Skinner. “The child is endowed at birth with general learning
abilities nut not with any languagespecific knowledge, linguistic behavior is
molded (externally reinforced) by adult speakers (a child ‘learning’ a language
is corrected when wrong and rewarded when right) and imitation plays an
important role”.
In other words, children do imitate adults and
learn by imitating and repeating what they hear.
Third, directly opposed to the
behaviorist point of view is the theory proposed by Noam Chomsky the innateness
of certain linguistic features.
“Chomsky argues that language
acquisition cannot be accounted for without positing a linguistically specific
system of principles and parameters that every healthy child is genetically
endowed by Universal Grammar (UG) and Language Acquisition Devices (LAD)
systems”.
It means that children are Sol Saporta, Psycholinguistics: A Book of Readings,
USA: Holt Rinehart and Winston, Inc, 1966, pp Adrian Akmajian, Richard A. Demers, Ann K.
Farmer and Robert M. Harnish, Linguistics: an Introduction to Language and
Communication, London: The MIT Press, 2001,
pp 478- Adrian Akmajian, Richard
A. Demers, Ann K. Farmer and Robert M. Harnish, Linguistics: an Introduction……………………….. born
with an innate capacity for learning human language. They discover the grammar
of their language based on their own inborn grammar.
Those theories explicitly
established both modes of linguistic communication and linguistic system
included phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and later pragmatics. A
child acquiring language must learn a system that can generate countless
sentences and apply them approximately in conversations and the other social
interactions of everyday life. Not only mastering the linguistic system
(phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic patterns), but
also the grammatical and communicative competence are needed to make children’s
utterances understandable under what circumstances a particular sentence is
uttered.
Language acquisition is also
natural, even effortless for parents. The process of acquiring language
especially first language is relatively automatic.
When children are playing with
their toys and interacting with their parents or with other children, they
involve in early significant language process. It helped children language
acquisition by the typical behavior of the people in the home environment
includes the parents, the adults, and other children. The statement that
supports this: “A child growing up in the first two or three years requires
interaction with other language-users in order to bring the ‘languagefaculty’
into operation with a particular language”.
However, in contrast with the above statement,
there is a strict opinion that language is not acquired by imitation. Children
are creative with language George Yule,
The Study of Language: an Introduction, Great Britain: Cambridge University Press,
1994, pp 136 and certainly do not need
to hear a particular sentence before saying it. They often utter sentences they
have not heard before, and they know intuitively which sentences are possible
and which are not, although all children go through periods when they make
predictable mistakes.
While Samsuri argues: Orang banyak
menyangka bahwa penguasaan
tiap bahasa pertama seakan-akan
tidak memerlukan usaha
sama sekali pada pihak
si anak. Pendapat
itu tentulah kurang
tepat. Hal yang sebenarnya
ialah, bahwa hanya
setelah bertahun-tahun dengan latihan
yang tidak jemu-jemunya
dan kesalahankesalahan yang
dibetulkan berulang-ulang secara
eksplisit maupun implisit si
anak akhirnya dapat
menguasai bahasa orang dewasa.
Dan bagi manusia
pada umumnya penguasaan bahasa merupakan
suatu prestasi yang
luar biasa selama hidupnya. Namun,
penguasaan tiap bahasa
tidaklah diluar kemampuan manusia
pada umumnya, tiap
manusia mempunyai potensi untuk
menguasa tiap bahasa
yang manapun juga di dunia ini.
(Many
people thought that
each first language
acquisition seemed without any
effort from the child.
That opinion is definitely
incorrect. The correct
one is that
after doing unstopped training
for years and
its mistakes which
are repeatedly being corrected
both explicitly and
implicitly, the child will
master the language
as adults do.
Generally for the human
beings, the language
mastery is valuable
achievement for his life.
But, the language
mastery actually is
not beyond its human
beings ability. Every
human being has
his own potency to master any
language in this world).
There have been many studies
focusing on the child language acquisition which have resulted diverse findings
based on the perspective and the theory approach the researchers used. Bokus and
Wales from Institute of Psychology, University of Marshaw have conducted a
research entitled “What will a three-year-old say?: An Experimental Study of
Situational Variation”.
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