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Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language. In other words, it is how human beings gain the ability to be aware of language, to understand it, and to produce and use words and sentences to communicate. Language acquisition involves structures, rules, and representation.
Researchers have found a very consistent order in the acquisition of first-language structures by children, which has drawn interest from Second Language Acquisition (SLA) scholars. Considerable effort has been devoted to testing the "identity hypothesis", which asserts that first and second language acquisitions may conform to similar patterns.
This evolved into the modern conceptualization that feature four basic principles: 1) language is essentially speech; 2) mastery of structures forms the core of the learning process; 3) structures possess the characteristic of a logical sequence, hence the language structures are graded; and, 4) full grading of structures is a basic requirement.
To separate the academic discipline from the learning process itself, the terms second-language acquisition research, second-language studies, and second-language acquisition studies are also used. SLA research began as an interdisciplinary field; because of this, it is difficult to identify a precise starting date. [5]
Language learning, on the other hand, is studying, consciously and intentionally, the features of a language, as is common in traditional classrooms. Krashen sees these two processes as fundamentally different, with little or no interface between them. In common with connectionism, Krashen sees input as essential to language acquisition. [4]
Bootstrapping in linguistics was first introduced by Steven Pinker as a metaphor for the idea that children are innately equipped with mental processes that help initiate language acquisition. Bootstrapping attempts to identify the language learning processes that enable children to learn about the structure of the target language. [2]
In linguistics, the innateness hypothesis, also known as the nativist hypothesis, holds that humans are born with at least some knowledge of linguistic structure.On this hypothesis, language acquisition involves filling in the details of an innate blueprint rather than being an entirely inductive process.
English grammar is the set of structural rules of the English language. This includes the structure of words , phrases , clauses , sentences , and whole texts. Overview