"Variable forms are difficult to acquire". Discuss Until the late 1960's it was still the largely subscribed view that children's language acquisition was, on the main part, innate and occurred independently

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"Variable forms are difficult to acquire". Discuss

Until the late 1960's it was still the largely subscribed view that children's language acquisition was, on the main part, innate and occurred independently from the social context and surroundings in which the child was brought up. However there have been movements in recent years to account for the effects that parents and other caregivers have on the linguistic development of a child (Romaine, 1986: 159). This paper intends to briefly look at the standard accepted view of acquisition of variation; the variationist view, which considers the social context; and to place these viewpoints into a current frame of reference by examining some contemporary studies. It intends to examine the studies in relation to acquisition of variable forms in early childhood and in adolescence.

The mainstream view of acquisition of variation is that during the early years of childhood, the main period of acquisition, most of the linguistic input comes from the primary care givers, i.e. the mother and father. For this reason "motherese" has long been the main focus of first language acquisition studies (Kerswill, 1996:181). The conventional view of first language acquisition is that during the first