We used the term "normal children" above. What is the normal child in this context? The linguistic and anthropological viewpoint here is, and has been for some time, that any child not handicapped by one of the recognized syndromes in speech pathology learns the language of its speech community without formal instruction (see, however, Berko-Gleason (1980) on direct instruction in certain sociolinguistic skills). Thus, although the specifics of what is learned obviously vary enormously, the process itse.lf is entirely natural to the human species. Given that it is possible to argue, as Trudgill (1975) has done, for example, that "all normal adult native speakers know and therefore use their own dialect of English perfectly" (p. 45), it would seem that, whatever the specifics may be, virtually every child is, by an early age, well on the way to becoming a fluent speaker.