How do we Learn to Speak?

In addition to speech processing, a second concern of psycholinguistics is how language develops in childhood. In this chapter, we will examine the cognitive capacities and conditions required for children’s language acquisition and see if these can be applied to a theory of how language emerged in the human species. The chapter begins with a description of the developmental stages of children’s language learning and uses these as a basis for determining how much of language can be attributed to an innate capacity, and how much depends on the social environment.