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UNDERSTANDING THE RULES OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION IN 

CHILDREN BASED ON “NATURAL GRAMMAR” THEORY BY 

CHOMSKY: A REVIEW OF LITERATURE 

 

 

Ani Agus Riani 

Applied Linguistics Program, State University of Yogyakarta 

Email: ani.agus2015@student.uny.ac.id 

 

ABSTRACT 

Rules of language acquisition in children based on "Natural Grammar" theory by 

Chomsky discuss about how real the language acquisition in children happens, 

how the real mastery and production of language happens in order to determine 

the comprehension of children processing of sound into a message. Finally, the 

children be able to obtain the messages themselves into the language. It is based 

on the approach of Chomsky's theory that is a theory of Natural Grammar (a 

grammar truth of God). The results in child's language acquisition has been 

conditioned in the memory so that the child is ready to learn the rules of the 

language.  

KEY WORDS: Rules, Understanding, speech and language, Production 

ABSTRAK 

Aturan pemerolehan bahasa anak-anak yang didasarkan pada teori " Natural 

Grammar " oleh Chomsky membahas tentang bagaimana real bahasa akuisisi 

pada anak-anak terjadi, bagaimana nyata penguasaan dan produksi bahasa 

terjadi untuk menentukan pemahaman anak dalam memproses suara ke dalam 

sebuah pesan. Akhirnya, anak-anak dapat memperoleh pesan itu sendiri ke dalam 

bahasa. Hal ini didasarkan pada pendekatan teori Chomsky Natural Grammar (a 

grammar truth of God). Hasil dalam pemerolehan bahasa anak telah 

dikondisikan dalam memori sehingga si anak sudah siap untuk mempelajari 

aturan bahasa. 

 

KATA KUNCI: Aturan-aturan, Pemaahaman, Ujaran dan Bahasa, Produksi 

 

 

 

 



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A. INTRODUCTION 

Human growth and development requires a long time and a long and 

consists of the phases that have their own characteristics. Among the phases, the 

initial growth phase or the growth rate of children is a phase that need a great 

attention because it has significance for human growth and development in the 

next period, especially in the aspects of language acquisition. Considering that 

language acquisition is an important aspect that marks the phase of growth and 

development of a child, Dardjowidjojo (1996) conducted a research of language 

acquisition in his own grandson named Echa. Echa language acquisition research 

starts from the age of 0-5 years. 

Talk about language acquisition in children is more interesting to be 

discussed considering not many people observe (especially the ordinary people 

including parents who raise their children). How the actual language acquisition in 

children occurred. We just know suddenly when a child is able to speak. Never 

previously imagined how utterances were acquired and ultimately used by a child 

as a tool to communicate. 

B. NATURAL GRAMMAR: A GRAMMAR TRUTH OF GOD 

Linguists' Truth of God tries to explain the language in relation to 

psychology. This is in contrast with the Hocus Pocus-game approach or ' math ', 

this approach using artificial intelligence theories therefore the theory 

demonstrated the ability of the speaker is not in human terms (as a creature who 

uses feeling) but the term computer process (operation). 

A calculator can solve math problems that humans do, without wanting to 

overcome that artificial intelligence theory is of no use. According to this theory 

the child's linguistic ability is done through a process of competence i.e. mastery 

of grammatical competence unconsciously. These competencies include three 

language proficiency i.e., phonology, syntax, and semantic. The performance 

process is divided into two, namely understanding and generating sentences. 

Natural grammar theories depart from the principles of grammar developed in the 



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absence of sound production and comprehension of the language first developed 

from the speech production. 

There are many children who are born mute. People like this are born with 

crippled (due to brain injuries) or on some other abnormalities found in the organs 

of articulation as the tool said. A child who silent but heard can develop the ability 

to produce speech, however, how the child can understand a sentence? Well, they 

can understand a sentence that reflects the main characteristics of the language, 

i.e. the understanding of a number of sentence grammar is not limited. 

Comprehension and production process that always tries to follow the 

understanding because the children acquire a language aspect in understanding, 

then the children can try to figure out how to use it in production. Therefore, the 

children try to harmonize the language production with linking system which has 

been developed to be understood (Clark and Hecht in Steinberg, 2001:37). 

Huttenlocher (Steinberg, 2001:37) conducted a research of four children 

aged 10-13 months and above the six-month period. He found that children can 

understand the sound at a level beyond that which they have developed in the 

production. It can be concluded that for normal children, such as children who are 

mute, speech understanding is the basis for the formation of grammar in mind, 

this is not to say that the production is not a sound that is not important. Clearly, 

however, the production is the process of optional and this is possibly derived 

from the grammar based on the principal process of speech understanding. 

Understanding of the grammatical truth of God-the next basic natural grammar 

performance will look like a speech understanding of the schemes below: 

 

 

 

 

 

Speech Sound 

Grammar Understanding 



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C. CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION BASED ON NATURAL 

GRAMMAR 

Chomsky (1986) stated that language does not exist in world (in any scientific 

sense) but resides in the heads of individual users. Hence there is no external 

target of learning, and hence no “learnability” in the traditional sense. Based on 

Natural Grammar by Chomsky, child language acquisition has been conditioned 

in the memory so that the child is ready to learn the rules of the language. 

Furthermore, the rules of speech comprehension developed in language and 

ultimately capable of producing speech language. On the basis of these rules, the 

principles of natural language is as follows: 

Children Trying to Understand Their Own  Worlds  

Newborn child found himself (entities) in the external and internal 

physical world, each trying to be understood. Babies know the physical world 

through their feelings and understand some basic unity, objects, events, and 

circumstances. Through the implementation of psychology, infant complete and 

assess an entity. The entity is known generally. The task is understanding the 

psychology of babies by seeking the understanding of mental understanding about 

hunger, thirst, pain, formulate encouragement, etc. This proposition as predicates, 

arguments, bookmark, and relationships with other arguments that others become 

the essence of a system of regular and can be modified in different ways. The rule 

applies in general (universal) for all human beings. After the baby has a 

perception about various aspects of the world, they begin to learn the language. 

Children start when learning through hearing speech in the form of objects, 

situations, and the introduction of environment. In turn, the motivation of children 

to the proposition and the structure of the grammar in understanding the meaning 

of the other speech be better. 

Meaning 



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The Basic Mental Existence Comes from the Physical World 

Let's think about some basic mental unity which relates to the physical 

world that will be studied. These are some examples of each use of attached terms 

in quotation marks, the single thing that shows the idea: (1) objects: mother, 

father, hand, dog, blanket, ball,  bananas; (2) the supplementary object 

(bookmark properties): large, black, small, soft, stinking; (3) event that shows 

objects involved in an action or movement: mother is running, barking dog, 

spinning ball: (4) circumstances indicate the object involved in the relationship 

are static (not active): banana on the table, dogs were in the back seat, mom was 

standing near the door, (5) attribute words to determine the nature and the 

evaluation of the events and circumstances, so many variety of attributes, 

modifications and evaluation, such as ' good for me ' and ' bad for me ' can be 

determined by events and circumstances.  

Understanding the child against physical world reality to build basic 

mental form, like ‘a dog barking’, ‘that's banana on the table’, so the idea of 

involving the object as the argument developed in the child accompanied by the 

child's attitude, evaluation, and others from words that help a knowledge network 

which covers many things, Steinberg (2001:37). 

Children be Aware of and Understand Their Mental World. 

At the same time, child trying to make sense of the outside world, they are 

also trying to understand and organize the subjective world as a part of mental 

experience and thought. They learn to distinguish certain ideas concerning certain 

experience such as heat, cold, itching, sores, taste, comfortable. They also 

formulate the mind (not to be confused with the sentence, which reflects their 

thinking) by using these ideas or any other they could pick from the experience of 

their world.  

Children Combining and Organizing the Knowledge of the Physical and 

Mental World 



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As time passed and the longer children experience more and more, 

children combine a lot of knowledge about the physical world. Children learn to 

recognize the diversity of objects, attributes and how they describe into events and 

circumstances. This further ideas and thoughts are relating to the child 

experiences. Like animals, children can learn a lot about the environment even in 

the absence of language. However, as time goes on, a unique overview of the 

environment that drew the attention of the child was the sound of speech. Children 

pay attention to objects, events and conditions in their environment, interpret the 

sound of speech as a danger or the sound of speech as a challenge to look out. 

 

D. THE DEVELOPMENT OF GRAMMAR 

The Formation of Vocabulary 

In observing the environment, the children basically wonder why people 

make speech sounds they do and they are looking to make sense of this 

phenomenon. They look for uniformity and in the end they notice that certain 

speech sounds occur in close relation to certain objects, events or circumstances 

that is foreign to them. For example, they noticed that the sound of the ' banana ' is 

uttered by a person when the bananas given to them, then the sound of ' mama ' is 

created when a certain woman walked into the room, the children especially learn 

words whose meaning is already there in his mind as an example, the concept; the 

cat. A child who has no idea about ' cat ' or other ideas could not be expected to 

gain meaning. The sound of the voice of the ' cat ' it doesn't matter how many 

times it is said to them without an object (cat) or the some instructions to them. 

Even on the idea of belonging to the child, such as ' cat ' idea of what can be 

shown. Children need some relationship towards the sound of the voice that is 

observed from before the child can begin to connect the sense at the sound of it. 

When children learn to understand the meaning of spoken words such as ' dog ', ' 

run ', and ' jump ' their store of knowledge of the language in a ' mental lexicon 

includes not only words but phrases and sentences, such as ' bread and butter ', ' 

good boy, ' don't touch ', and 'come here’. At first, the child is a recipient of the 



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passive voice that sounds, such as ' cats ', with one way, from the sound of the 

concept. So, on the vocabulary in the children minds are basically of the form: 

 

 

 

 

 

Consequently, when a child hears a strange sign in the physical world, 

children can discover the concept in a way shows the sound of a voice that has he 

keeps in his mind. In this way, not only the meaning of words but of the whole 

phrases and sentences can be understood by directly without grammatical process. 

For foreign things and objects, an analysis of the language is required. 

The Development of Morphology 

At the time of sound through the experience and analysis of children 

against physical environment dam soul, children learn to understand the meaning 

of common words, children learn the parts and understand the variety section of 

the word constantly, phrase and morpheme, related to words. This lesson is based 

on the analysis of input of speech sound. Children make a hypothesis relating to 

the sound he heard and by using hypothesis related to the sound he heard and by 

using hypothesis on the origin of the sound, form the origin of the meaning of the 

morpheme. These are the basic rules that are used when the child then tried to 

speak. Once the child begins to speak, the error often indicates the child 

understanding statement regarding morphology. Therefore, if a child says 

something like ‘breaked, ‘goed’, ‘mouses’, and ‘sheeps’, it shows the mental 

children against the rules that underlie the rules of tense (past tense) and plural 

(plural and singular). Therefore, when we use production data to demonstrate 

knowledge of understanding, it must always be present in memory that the sound 

Vocabulary Entries 

Speech Sound + Concept 



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production data is a reflection of the best of the knowledge of abstract language 

that has been previously acquired by children through understanding. 

The Development of Syntax 

In his memory, children have thoughts and insights on the environment 

and themselves. Children forever thinking about their own world, objects, and life 

in it. Therefore what should be done with the child in learning to understand the 

syntactic structure of utterances, it is recognized: (1) the predicate-verb, adjective 

and pleases with prepositions and conjunctions; (2) the argument-noun and noun 

phrases with the semantic role, (3) hypothesis, the syntax for these elements, the 

elements of a sentence is expressed.  

Knowledge of the meaning of noun before is very important because 

without knowledge that the child will have little chance in guessing the predicate 

relations expressed in sound preposition. 

Nouns, Structure Words and Preposition as Indicators of Roles and 

Argument. 

As a language, English is generally rely on the meaning of nouns (clause 

sentences) to signify an argument and structure of words and prepositions to 

indicate the nature of a particular argument. Example in the sentence: 'John gives 

candy to the bear'; John, candies and bear is a noun or object phrase with 

meaning that indicates the status of argument.  

Each (phrases objects) present role Distinct verb predicate 'give', a 

description structure of the child that the object phrase come first before the verb, 

'John' is an argument, the object phrase directly follow the verb and the 

prepositions , candy, is an object of argument, whereas the noun phrase follows 

the verb and the preposition ‘to’ bear is the argument receiver. At first, the child 

can only interpret some of the syntactic sign and rely on the meaning of a noun 

and a verb, so with a common sentence structure i.e. verb + noun phrase + (noun 

phrase). , for example, ' the dog is jumping ', ' cat ' hunting dogs, as well as for the 



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argument of self identification name, the meaning of the preposition as well as 

order of noun phrase must be learned. 

E. OTHER FUNCTION WORDS AND INFLECTIONS 

This context tries to understand the phrases and sentences that vary with 

the function of other prepositions. The introduction of something with the event or 

situation that is felt in the environment, children have to guess the meaning and 

function words. This includes the auxiliary verb (will, can), factor (the, a, this), 

said auxiliary (do, be, have) and conjunctions (and, but, if). It has long to be 

understood. Speech that does not have the intended effect, it could make a child 

make another hypothesis. Getting to know the language and intent of others. In 

this sense, the production, the secondary (second) may have a good effect / result 

in a better understanding of the second process. 

F. THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMPLEX STRUCTURES 

Children learn to understand the underlying complexity of a negative 

sentence, phrase questions, sentences with relative clauses, passive, and others. 

Then the process of guessing the meaning of unknown sound arrangement, only 

then the child can record how meaning is expressed in speech. This is a sentence 

structure that relation to the relevant objects, events, and circumstances in an 

environment that gives the child a sense. At the time of the child hypotheses 

regarding principles and rules of sound events. In this case knowledge of the 

structure of syntactic complexity were formed into the grammar in the child's 

memory.  It must be noted that the grammar is equipped with understanding. there 

is no hint in which the sound is given as input to the grammar so that meaning in 

conjunction with the framework of a proposition can be given as output. Once 

children understand the many negative form, the picture will appear in the 

production. Because children advance in knowledge understanding of syntax, then 

progress will be reflected in the quality of its negative speech. Then, the process 

of understanding the process of formation in basic natural grammar is as follows: 

 
Speech 



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G. SPEECH PRODUCTION 

Vocabulary 

As I have previously written for vocabulary comprehension, vocabulary 

was originally the inclusion in the speech and ends with meaning, namely: sound-

meaning. Vocabulary should be prepared based on the voice to sound a clear 

purpose. Sound sequences that are similar or different from the other and the other 

will be registered on a base. To understand speech spoken in a normal value, 

which is quite right, people should have spoken in the normal value, people 

should have access speech or it would be unlikely to be found. Instead, a 

vocabulary that is prepared for the purpose of production should give a sense-

arrangement basis. People who would like to say a sentence would have the 

vocabulary associated with it means that speech can be seen clearly similar to the 

production. 

For production purposes, we will access using proportional framework, as 

a guide. We know what we think into revealed but we have to find a way to 

pronounce the sound. We want our vocabulary for listing on the basis of meaning, 

namely: sense - sound. Actually, we need all kinds of mental or soul. We can say 

that the inclusion of vocabulary related to sound and meaning, and it's not a clue 

what to wear. In fact we heard more noise than the sound we make sense of the 

relationship. 

Grammar Understanding 

Meaning 



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However, in order to produce the sound of a voice, a sense - sound, we 

need to access the same vocabulary. However, the meaning must be arranged with 

respect to a variety of communication and semantic field. That means that the 

network must be able to accept the notion of meaning and it gained a voice that 

was imported by the meaning. 

The Development of Articulation and Sound Development Stages 

There are many variables such as when the children began to utter the 

words. A child could possibly say his first words at the age of 5 months while 

others can not say his first word until about 2 years. This fact is not the way that 

shows the children who possess delayed a little conceptual arrangement of the 

world or to understand a few words. 

Without a doubt, some of the variables should be made with the physical 

development with regard to the pronunciation of the sound and its relationship 

should be formed in the brain (Bates et al .., 1992) which states that it is not easy 

to make the sound of a particular sound. The brain child should establish relations 

to select a series of words and to pronounce it in a stage. Understanding speech 

sound is not difficult because the stage itself is given as input. A child entering a 

level word or a number of single words is separated (Scolion 1976, Bloom, 1973) 

Production of Understanding: Development of a Word Production 

      An auxiliary verb as a syntax that is based on the understanding of wear 

due to allow the production of sound is important for children to produce many 

sentences. This is not a subject of reversal functions, operations, and this rule 

(function / operation / principles) that will not provide the intended results. 

This is a production to the understanding of grammar and interactions that 

allow the child to produce a sound sentence syntactically. Because knowledge of 

the science of language in children in increasing the understanding of grammar, 

children tried to use that knowledge in production. 

G.  CONCLUSION 



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Based on Chomsky’s natural grammar theory, child language acquisition has 

been conditioned in memory so it's ready to learn the rules of the language further 

developed in language and speech understanding could ultimately produce the 

speech language. There are some way in children to learn the language rules (1) 

the child trying to understand the "world" them; (2) form the basis of mental 

derived from the physical world; (3) children be aware and understand his own 

mental world (4) children combine and organize the knowledge of the physical 

and mental world. The development of children's grammar develops through; (1) 

formation of vocabulary; (2) the development of morphology; (3) development of 

syntax; and (4) noun, wording, prepositions as indicators and the role of the 

phrase objects and arguments. While the development of children's language 

develops speech production through: (1) vocabulary; (2) the development of 

articulation and developmentally sound; and (3) the production of understanding 

the development of a production auxiliary verb. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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