Comparation in the acquisition of relative clauses and cleft between monolingual and bilingual children

Abstract

Regardless of a person's color, race, religion, culture, etc., people all come together on one common ground: Language. Every human being in this world has the ability to communicate with others regardless of the modality, either in a visual, auditory or tactical manner. Language is a unique human capacity that unites all and differentiates us from the rest of the animals on this planet. But what is language? What do people mean when they say they know a certain language? How did a person get to a certain level) that allowed him/ her to communicate successfully with others? This last question focuses on language acquisition. Language acquisition is defined as a process that every human being goes through in order to construct a language specific grammar necessary in order to communicate with others in a community. Whether this process is innate or totally environmentally dependant or a combination of both is an issue that will not be focused on in this research paper. For the purpose of this study, what is important is to recognize that every normal child acquires language. It is important to emphasize the fact that the word ""normal"" refers to any child who does not possess a severe language or cognitive disability which would prohibit him/ her from acquiring a language traversing the ""set stages."" Similarly, a child who has never had any exposure to linguistic input of any kind (i.e.: Genie will never acquire language in any normal fashion)."