Language development and acquisition in children

Language acquisition is a natural developmental process and is unique to Homo sapiens in which a child acquiring his or her mother tongue as a first language.  The simplest theory of language development is that children learn language by imitating adult language. A second possibility is that children acquire language through conditioning. Noam Chomsky put forward innateness hypothesis. Piaget argued that language is a cognitive process and that linguistic development depends on general cognitive development. Lev Vygotsky proposed that although children have innate cognitive bases for language acquisition, the actual learning begins with functions that children want to express. Finally, the connectionist theory of language development suggested that children acquire language without ever figuring out the rules or even that there are rules. Although a great deal of research has been conducted, it still is not known exactly how children are able to succeed in the remarkable feat of language acquisition. Some attempts to relate cognitive and linguistic development using the Piagetian stages have not been successful. Major advances have occurred in understanding both linguistic and cognitive development, but these advances have not been shown to have a close relationship. It is not possible with the present state of knowledge to choose definitively from the different theories. It seems logical that a combination of imitative skills, an innate language acquisition device, cognitive development, and social communication interactions contribute to language development.