Children’s Creativity in Constructing Language

Behaviorists view children’s mind as a blank slate, which means that children develop language only by imitating the adults’ version of the language. As a result, parents can construct their child language based on their beliefs and what they want. However, that cannot be accurate all the time. Children are creative. They create their own language rules by themselves. As the get exposed more to the language, they form their own hypotheses about the language rules. They use these rules and test them while speaking. These hypotheses are important part of children’s first language acquisition and development because they help children in understanding the concepts and how to use the language. The most salient evidence of developing their own hypotheses is the mistakes that they make while using the language. These mistakes can be detected at different language domains. Therefore, children form their language hypotheses at various domains such as phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and vocabulary.

The first language domain in which children can create their hypothesis is phonology. Demuth (2011) proposed that children have their own-rule based phonological system (p. 574). For example, children tend to produce CV words more than CVC words. As a result, they tend to omit the last consonant. Therefore, they pronounce noise as ‘noi’ and back as ‘ba’ (Peccei, 1999, p. 62). As children develop more in the language, they correct the hypothesis they made about the CV structure, so they can produce CVC words appropriately.

Children also form their own hypotheses in morphology. They use allomorphs to indicate specific language rules. Berko’s research (1958) indicated that children generate morphological rules to make plurals, past tense,...

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.../ to form the past tense of the verb. Another common error is saying that the plural of sheep is ‘sheeps’. This also indicates the overgeneralization of the plural-making rules. Second language learners also overextend the meanings of different words if they have a limited vocabulary. For example, they may use the word ‘car’ to refer to different means of transport such as trucks and buses. This means that both first language and second language users creatively construct their language by forming their own hypotheses about language use.

Works Cited

Berko, J. (1958). The child's learning of english morphology. UMI Dissertations Publishing.

Demuth, K. (2011). The acquisition of phonology. In J. Goldsmith, J. Riggle, & A. Yu (Eds.), The handbook of phonological theory (pp. 571-596). Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.

Peccei, J. S. (1999). Child language. New York: Routledge.