CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. The Background of the Study

Language cannot be seperated from human life. It is essential to
every aspect and interaction in human daily lives. Scovel (1998: 4) defines
psycholinguistics as the use of language and speech as a window to the
nature and structure of the human mind. Talking about language and
human mind will not be separated from the study of psychological and
neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, and understand
language. Psycholinguistics means is the study of the psycho- logical and
neurological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and
produce language (Altman, 2001:1).
Several theories and approaches have emerged over the years to
study and analyze the process of language acquisition. Language
acquisition is the process of understanding that involves the ability to
observe or perceive sentences heard, while the publishing process involves
the ability to produce their own sentences (Chaer 2003:167). The Innate
theory asserts that language is an innate capacity and that a child‟s
brain contains special language-learning mechanisms at birth in which
the main proponent of this theory is Chomsky (Pinker, 1994).

Based on the explanation above, the writer is interested in

analyzing language acquisition of children especially in three year old
child named Raka Sanjaya because as far as in the human beings’ mind,
they have means in producing and comprehending speech but they seldom
think that how learn to produce and comprehend the speech itself. In this
study, the writer chooses a child who three years old since the writer can
get more data which suitable to be analyzed. Hence, the writer wants to

1
 analyze about a language acquisition entiled “A Study on Language
Acquisition of Three Years Old Child Named Raka Sanjaya”.

B. The Limitation of the Study

Based on the background of the study, this study only focus on three
main limitation. They are phonological, morphological, and syntactical
acquisition.

C. The Problem Statements of the Study

Referring to the limitation of the study, the writer proposes the problem
statements as follows.
1. How is the phonological acquisition of three years child named Raka
Sanjaya?
2. How is the morphological acquisition of three years child named Raka
Sanjaya?
3. How is the syntactic acquisition of three years child named Raka
Sanjaya?

D. The Aim of the Study

Based on the problem statements above, this study aims to:
1. describe the phonological acquisition of three years child named Raka
Sanjaya,
2. describe the morphological acquisition of three years child named Raka
Sanjaya, and
3. describe the phonological acquisition of three years child named Raka
Sanjaya.

E. The Use of the Study

The use of this study is classified into practical and theoretical use.
1. The practical use
The result of this study can be used to improve knowledge of
child’s linguistic acquisition.

2
 2. The theoretical use
The result of this study can be used to enrich the repertoire of
psycholinguistics of child’s linguistic acquisition.

F. The Organization of the Study

This research consists of five chapters as follows:
Chapter I is an introduction. This chapter covers the background of
the study, the limitation of the study, the statement of the problem, the
aims of the study, the uses of the study, and the organization of the study.
Chapter II is the review of related literature. It consists of theories
of pscycholinguistic, language acquisition, stages and development of
language acquisition.
Chapter III is the method of the study. It discusses research design,
the sources of the data, the technique of collecting the data, and the
technique of analyzing the data.
Chapter IV is the result of the study. It covers the data analysis and
the discussion of the finding.
Chapter V consists of conclusion and suggestion.