The phonological Acquisition Process

The linguistics development is influenced by two points: biological growth and environment. The biological growth is associated to the motorical progression. This step will significantly determine the reason why some children in particular ages have already been able to speak and the other have not been yet. Physically, children ability to produce the words is marked by the development of mouth, tongue and tooth to grow. The language acquisition (capability in word pronouncing and understanding the meaning) is somehow inseparable from the capability of seeing, listening, and interpreting the symbols by the brain maturity.

Besides, environment also takes a prominent role in acquiring language in terms of phonology because the children are surrounded by parents giving a big contribution to stimulate a polite language of the children. An input from the environment is such an essential factor for the human to retrieving a language. In relating to the increasing of the utterance ability, the comprehensive ability of the children also significantly improve, and able to absorb the words spoken by adults. For instance, if the picture of ‘kucing’ (cat) is shown and someone says to the kids that it is ‘ikan’ (fish), they will respond by saying ‘utan’ (bukan).

a.    Native Country
In general, the order of acquisition of classes of sounds goes by manner articulation: nasals are acquired first, and then glides, stops, liquids, fricatives, affricatives. Natural classes characterized by place of articulation of features also appear in children utterance according to an order series: labials, velars, alveolar, and palatals. It is not surprising that mama is an early word for many children.

    In early language, children may not make a linguistic distinction between voiced and voiceless consonants. Also, they can perceive the difference. If the first year is devoted to figuring out the phonetic inventory of the target language, the second year involve learning how these sounds are used in the phonology of the language, especially which contrast are phonemic. When they first begin to contrast one set­­-that is, when they learn that /p/ and /b/ are distinct phonemes – they also begin to distinguish between /t/ and /d/, /s/ and /z/.and all the other voiceless-voiced phonemic pairs.

b.  In foreign country (Indonesia)

The phonemic inventory of the children mirrored that of their parents. The marked difference was the presence of affricates in subject aged 2;4 and older. Affricates are recorded in foreign norms as being present in children aged 3;8 and older and between ages 3 to 8 years. These sounds are influenced by early linguistic exposure as seen in common early words for the child. It is also related to the children’s ability to perceive these differences begin when they are babies.

Within two years old, children generally have already mastered all the vocal phonemes of Indonesian Language. At the first time, they start to recognize [a], [i], and [u] vocals continued to the other vocals. After that, they learn to pronounce consonants. For example, bilabial and alveolar consonants have regularly emerged by the precedence of the light consonants [p] and [t]. Velar consonants [k] and [g] have not heard yet except [k] in the end of the word that sounds like glottal.

The existence of fricative sound is initially heard only in the end of the word too like the word [abis]. While in the word beginning, a fricative consonant is not heard: [ama] “sama”, [ini] “sini”, [akit] “sakit” and soon. Global fricative sound [h] also appears in the end of the word [nih] “nih”, [tuh] “tuh”, [udah] “sudah”. While in the word beginning, it is not heard: [abis] “habis”, [antu] “hantu”. Another fricative sounds [f], [v], [z], [s], and [x] are not found yet.

then, the acquired nasal consonants are [m] and [n],either in the beginning, middle or end of word. Toward the development of velar nasal sound [ŋ]also appear but only in the end of the words. The sound of palatal nasal [ñ] is not available yet and being replaced by [n].