BBC video – Dr. Robert Winston; How children acquire language.

Linguistic skills are one of the most important things to learn in the human culture – it is a necessity for human life. We use words and language to communicate, express ideas, thoughts and emotions, to show experiences and much more. It is a proven fact that when a child learns a language, it is significantly easier for them to learn compared to an adult learning a second language – this is because a different part of the brain is used. As stated in the documentary, ‘’clams have their shells and we have our language’’ – this stresses the importance of language which is shown through the need to learn it at such a young age.

In this clip, it shows 15 month old Zac as a young toddler beginning to learn the basics of language. In the back of the throat, there is a vocal tract known as the larynx which sticks up and is very high until around the age of 2. The location of the larynx at Zac’s age means that it is difficult for him to produce certain sounds – however, the position of the larynx allows him to breathe and suckle at the same time. In order for Zac to be able to produce a wider range of speech, his larynx will need to have dropped by 3cm – in this way, the larynx becomes the voice box which thus allows speech to be made. It has been proven that for a child to produce one word it takes a total of 30 muscles in the face – the tighter the chords in the throat, the higher the voice. Although the lowering of the voice box is essential for the beginning of speech production, it does have its constraints – in some cases it may lead to instances of choking.

Moira, a two and a half year old girl is much more advanced compared to Zac in terms of linguistic and grammatical skills – at this age, she is likely to learn 10 new words per day. It has been argued that children around this age are like sponges, they tend to soak up all forms of language through imitation – this supports Vygotsky’s theory or social interaction. The documentary showed Moira coming into contact with an animal she had never seen before – a fawn. Once her mother had said the word, Moira was able to imitate it with no problem whatsoever. Moira also used overgeneralisation when speaking: when asked what the plural of a mouse was, she said ‘2 mouses’ rather than the correct utterance ‘2 mice’. It is clear that Moira had formed this utterance alone as there was no possibility of her learning it through imitation. This supports the idea that children get grammar correct virtually all the time yet make mistakes when irregular verbs are not taught. In this way, grammar is innate when it comes to learning language – all is understood with the exception of irregular verbs. Moira is applying the logical rule of making a word plural, yet fails to do so correctly due to the verb being irregular.

Towards the end of the documentary, the concept of self-awareness is explored. There is an abstract example of reflection – Julia, who is 14 months old lacks self-awareness simply because she does not have the cognitive ability to recognise herself. However, Moira who is over a year older is aware of her identity which is shown through the use of the pronoun ‘I’ and ‘me’. In this way, Moira is aware that she is a different person to everyone else and therefore is wary of her own needs. However, there are consequences of self-awareness, it can lead to many children entering the tantrum stage, also known as the ‘terrible two’s’. At this age, Moira has self-awareness to recognise her needs and has the linguistic ability and language to express these. Moira uses the personal pronouns in order to get her own way, also with the use of declaratives such as ‘’I’m hungry’’.

To conclude, children’s brains and bodies adapt to ensure that they are able to acquire language. This is evident through the positioning of the larynx, the ability to learn language and their innate grammatical skills. Most of what children learn is through imitation with the exception of overgeneralisation – a mistake made as a result of children’s confusion with irregular verbs.

Written by Henry Howard, the recipe book ‘’England’s newest way’’ was published in the year 1703. It consists of various different recipes including ‘’good pudding’’, ‘’green pudding’’, ‘’a cabbage pudding’’ and ‘’calves-foot pudding’’. This recipe book portrays a shift in the world of recipes in that previous recipe books had not been attributed directly to named members of the artioscracy.

The vast majority of these recipes consist of a range of imperative verbs such as ‘’take’’, ‘’put’’ and ‘’grate’’.  The syntax structure in this recipe is mainly complex and compound sentences as the text  is displayed in a list type structure, although the discourse structure does not support this as it is displayed in paragraphs. There is also an example of non-standard orthography – the recipe says ‘rowl’ rather than ‘roll’, this reflects the time frame in which this recipe was made. A further example  is when the recipe uses 'rabbet' in replace of 'rabbit'. The syntax of third recipe is elliptical, the word order is nonstandard - failing to make sense in some areas.

It is evident that this text was written in the early 1700’s which is shown through the use of extended ‘s’ – whereby they look like the letter ‘f’. For example in this text, one instruction is ‘’beat feven eggs’’ instead of ‘’beat seven eggs’’. Also reflecting the time period this text was written, the word ‘caul’ is used in the second recipe – many people in the modern day may be unaware of what this word means, therefore would have to search the meaning to understand, making it hard to follow the recipe.