Abstract
The main objective of this study is to trace the language development of the child Anwar from a
Jordanian Arabic-speaking home, from her first vocal sounds to the first sentences. The present study
which is based on “naturalistic observations” covers the acquisition of Arabic during her pre-school age.
The study was carried out by maintaining the proper records of the child utterances in the form of a
‘diary’ and the traditional method of phonetic transcription was used to record utterances. It was found
that she had acquired Arabic by the time she was five. The same year she was admitted to kindergarten.
The whole study will be confined to different stages of language acquisition.
Keywords: psycholinguistics, first language acquisition, second language learning, stages in language
acquisition
1. Introduction 1.1
Psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics is an interdisciplinary field of specialization which developed in the early 1950s.
‘Psycholinguistics’ per se is a hybrid term combining psych- (from psychology) with linguistics.
Theoretically, psycholinguistics combines “techniques of psychology” with “techniques of linguistics”. In
simplest words, psycholinguistics may be defined as the study of the relation of the linguistics to
psychology. It studies “the correlation between linguistic behavior and the psychological processes
thought to underlie that behavior” (Crystal 1985:251). The primary aim of psycholinguistics, as Lehmann
(1976:27) points out, “is the study of the relation of language and behavior”, Traugott and Pratt
(1983:407) however, define psycholinguistics as “the study of the relation between language and mind,
especially of how language is learned and remembered”. The concepts of “mind” and “behavior”
represent two schools of thought in psychology, viz., “mentalism” and “behaviorism”. Mentalism as
advanced by Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) was a dominant trend in the early history of psychology.
Wundt defined psychology as “the study of the mind”. Behaviorism was founded by J.B. Watson (1878-
1958) who argued that “the mind, or the consciousness, was a “myth”. He believed that “psycholinguists
should focus on observable behavior”. Behaviorists considered language as a mode of human behavior
called” verbal behavior”. These concepts occupy an extremely significant position in the development of
psycholinguistic studies in the United States. The American linguist, Leonard Bloomfield (1887-1949) was
under the deep influence of mentalist psychology of Wundt when he published An Introduction to the
Study of Language in 1914. But he became a behaviorist when he wrote Language (1933). In later
periods, there was a strong reaction in Noam Chomsky against behaviorism. His view of B.F. Skinner’s
book, Verbal Behavior (1957) is a testimony to this.
Finally, one can hardly overestimate the close relationship between linguistics and psychology. Different
schools of thought in the psychology have influenced the linguistic studies and many linguistic theories
and concepts are permeated by psychological thinking.
1.2 Objectives of the Study
The main objective of the study is to trace the language development of the child Anwar from a
Jordanian Arabic-speaking home, starting from the production of her first vocal sounds to the first
sentences. The study aims at identifying the most important factors that influence the child’s process of
acquisition of her mother tongue which is based on “naturalistic observations” covers the acquisition of
Arabic during her pre-school age.
1.3 Scope of the Study
Language acquisition means acquiring a language as a mother tongue or the first language. According to
Corder (1973:109), “Language acquisition takes place during the period when the infant is maturing
physically and mentally”. Language acquisition comes quite naturally. A child acquiring his mother
tongue is exposed to a different kind of data which are unrecognized, ungraded and unsystematic. These
are not “carefully planned or logically ordered set of data (Corder 1973:110). The whole study will be
confined to the stages in language acquisition: early vocalization, holophrastic, and the first sentences.
The present study is divided into five sections: section 1: introduction, section 2: emergence of
psycholinguistics, section 3: studies on language acquisition, section 4: distinction between first
language acquisition and second language learning, and section 5: stages in language acquisition.
1.4 Methodology
The study was carried out by maintaining the proper records of the child utterances in the form of a
‘diary’ and the traditional method of phonetic transcription was used to record utterances.