Genie Language Acquisition

Genie Language Acquisition
Name:
Institution:
Aspects of linguistic development and the interest to study the same date back to the 18th century. At the time most of the debates revolved around the elements of genetics and environment effects. Influencing the rate at which children in different regions developed their ability to use and understand language. Some of the cases that have been studied through time are those regarding children that have been brought up by wild animals such Amala and Kamala, who are supposedly brought up by wolves. Details around this revelation in the 1920s are sketchy. Another such intriguing case is that victor the wild boy, whose case also relates closely to the eventualities of the two others. There is also a third group of children having difficulties learning their language, especially where they are isolated deliberately from the society. While there were limited cases like these ones, there was also limited observation and skills to do the same. This case study tries to bring out the development of linguistic skills of genie using the modern platforms and expertise such as psychologists, linguists, neurologists and psychiatrists. In the study, the experts explore deeper into the development of the child named Genie born in 1957.
When genie was assessed on the aspects of language acquisition, she showed very few signs that she had any language skills. More importantly she had difficulties controlling her speech organs. This could have been due to the fact that she also had difficulties controlling most of her muscles. At the age of thirteen when she was found and admitted to the children hospital, she did not have the ability to use the knowledge she had let alone understand language (Bainbridge, 2014). As such she had to be taken through the first language much like a five year old. When she was spoken to she sometime responded, but even then that did not give the indication that she understood the language used. This therefore, underlined that the fact that the experts needed to device new games and tests that would help her grow linguistically; which they did. Regardless of the language the child the child id learning, the process is the same. It partly depends on the innate abilities of the child and the social interactions with the adults. The child at the age of five will both learn the receptive language, which is indicative of their understanding what is said to them (Speech-language-therapy.com, 2014). At the same time they have to learn the expressive language where they can respond to commands and express their emotions and thoughts. Generally the learning process takes three steps, where the child first learns sounds, then words and finally the sentences. This takes the form of acquiring phonology, morphology, vocabulary and syntax skills. When the child is born, they have the ability to respond to rhythms in any language and changes in pitch, pace and stress. By six months the child understands most of the sounds and has begun to babble and coo as a sign that they are learning the language. By the eighth month the child can tell the different groups of words; such that they can tell where one groups starts and ends and the so is the start of the next. The meaning of the word sounds is however not understood. In two years the child can attach meaning to words, with the first words being the nouns. Within thirty six months the child can make up to 90% of grammatical sentences. Compared to Genie, she had not had any form meaningful social interaction which would partly explain her lack of linguistic skills.
As stated earlier, the child at the age of around six months will start to make sounds that are vegetative and later cooing sounds. This is associated with phonemes in speech and at the same time relates to primes. The English language is broken into around 40 phonemes whi...