Children display an amazing ability to become fluent speakers of any language
consistently spoken around them. Every normal human child who is not brought up in virtual
isolation from language use soon comes to speak one or more languages natively.
The child‟s acquisition of his native language is not dependent on any special
tutoring. Parents may spend many hours “reinforcing” every recognizable bit of their child‟s
verbal activity with a smile or some other reward. But there is no particular reason to believe
that such activity affects the child‟s ultimate success in becoming a native speaker of his
parents‟ language. Children can pick up a language by playing with other children who
happen to speak it just as well as they can through the concentrated efforts of doting parents.
All they seem to need is sufficient exposure to the language in question.
This capacity for acquiring language is remarkable for a number of reasons. It is remarkable
first because of its uniformity throughout the human race. There simply are no cases of
normal human children who, when they are given the chance, fail to acquire a native
language. By way of comparison, it is not at all unusual for a child to fail to master
arithmetic, reading, swimming, or gymnastics despite a considerable amount of instruction.
Language acquisition, in other words, is species uniform.
It is also species specific. Every normal person learns a human language, but no other
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animal, not even the most intelligent ape, has been shown to be capable of making the
slightest progress in this direction, although some animals can learn to solve problems, use
tools, and so on. Language acquisition thus appears to be different in kind from acquisition
of the other skills mentioned.
The progress is further remarkable for its comparative speed and perfection. When we
actually attempt to take a language apart to see how it works, we find it is extraordinarily
complex and it involves highly abstract organizational principles. Yet, within the first few
years of his life, every human child has succeeded in mastering at least one such system.
Furthermore, the linguistic system that the child masters is identical to the one employed by
the people around him. If children are regularly exposed to two languages, they will very
probably learn both; moreover, they will succeed in keeping the two linguistic systems
separate, which is a considerable achievement in itself.