AGE AND DEVELOPMENT OF MENTAL LEXICON

AGE AND DEVELOPMENT OF MENTAL LEXICON

INTRODUCTION

Language is the most important thing for people as a means of communication. It is a valuable instrument of thought dealing with verbal and non-verbal interaction patterns. When people interact with others in society at anytime and anywhere certainly they must use a language. Without  a  language,  people will  find  some  troubles  when  they  do  their  activities and toward the others. There is no society without a language. In this world we have numerous languages which are different then another. We are able to connect with language community and transferring anything with it. It makes the role of a language among the people in this life is very crucial. The language helps people to show their perspective concerning something in a multitude of situation. How somebody distinguish concept broadly concern to his or her language proficiency. It is including of reading, listening, writing, and speaking. What we say or write is heavily influenced by what we hear and we listen.

Language processing refers to the way human beings use words to communicate ideas and feelings, and how such communications are processed and understood. In communication, human being produces any words which have been stored in the brain. The interaction between the words and its process in the brain happened completely or it is called as mental lexicon. In the mental lexicon words are organized in terms of their phonology, syntax, semantics and other linguistic aspects happen into complex structure. The linguistic aspects of the mental lexicon are reflected in the structure of speech and contribute to the development of new mental lexicons. Need long time to develop the words because the process is complex. According to Caplan (1992) there are four models of language processing, first, the way in which the linguistic structures are active by each processor needs to be specified. For instance, the forms of words may be listed and searched for as separate entries in a mental dictionary. Second, most processors are obligatorily active when their inputs are presented to them. Third, language processors generally operate unconsciously. Fourth, components of the system operate remarkably quickly and accurately. The four models of language processing had shown a complex system between one system and another. The complex words will be stored in the mind where in the brain the processing of information occurs. The mental space where this phenomenon occurs has been called the mental lexicon. The mental lexicon is a complex system of the mind that allow human to access information in a variety of ways. By having an efficient and effective mental lexicon can improve vocabulary acquisition.

In every level of human’s age the language can be seen differently between fast and slow. In the child level where the process of acquiring the language happens firstly, sometimes a number of children are able to produce the language quickly. They are able to store many indexes in brain and processing the vocabulary into speaking.  During this period, children need enough nutrition to keep their memory. It is because the age is called as the golden age where in the age what they eat has a great contribution to acquire the language. The ability of brain to acquire the words in the age will influence to their fluency in daily interaction. Meanwhile the fluency will effect to their knowledge. We can say that the limit of someone’s knowledge refers to the limit of his or her acquire the language. In another phenomenon a number of children are slowly to develop the index. It can make them disturbance in speaking to the others and in the next age they will a bit hard to find appropriate word in interaction with the others. The disturbance of producing words and sound mostly happen in the child where the problem relates to the neurological system and motorist factor in the brain does not work well. The problem has a great relation between the speed and neurological factor to develop the speech. I believe that the fluency of people in developing their language tends to how much words they stored in the brain in the golden age. It is because in the child age all information can obtain and absorb. If it is not optimized effectively it will influence to the language competence. At the first this paper will explain about the process of acquiring the language in the brain deals with the mental lexicon and the obstacle in developing the words based on the age level. It also tells us the mental lexicon toward development of age.

DISCUSSION          

Brain is a central of human nervous system controls all function of the whole body. The brain contains about a hundred billion brain cells that are connected into functioning networks. By the time a child, some of these connections become permanent, while others disappear as the child grows. The brain works systematically make the process of each part of body unite very well. The brain also has important role to human survival where in the brain all the process is conducted by two sides. They are the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere. Both sides have significant position in the complex organ. Especially in the left hemisphere has essential contribution to the human language ability. The development of language in the brain deals with how active someone stored the words where the development has a meaning of encouraging the function of motorist system toward the language ability. In the lexicon context, the words have to be able to be pronounced and they have to be acquired by speakers. The representations of the lexicon have to be stored in the brain in such a way that there are connections between the different aspects of a single word as well as over whole categories of words. The construction of the word will allow people to communicate with the others. This indicates that the lexicon is allowing us to access words in terms of syntactic category, phonological characteristics and meaning among others.

The words process in brain. The process will determine what the words will produce based on the complexity of the language stored in the brain. In acquiring the words brain has memory which develops words into short tem memories and long term memories. In short term memories the process occurs at the front of the brain not in the deep area. For instance you know the name someone whom you have just met. While in long term memory you may have a memory of your best friend's wedding as a unit rather than several separate memories of the parts like how about the people who were present, how the party was going on, what dishes are served, and anyone you meet at that time. In brain scans, the scientists looked at different regions of the brain light up when someone remembers an episode from memory, showing how memories represents an index of the records of different sensations and thoughts. The memory itself depends on the relationship between brain cells or the neurons and combination of memory. So if you hear a piece of music you may be flooded with the memories of others that you associate with a particular episode where you hear the same music.

All normal human newborns are capable of learning any human language. It relates to speech perception, processing and production. So the fluency of people in language reflects by how many words are stored in the brain. The fluency of people in speaking is influenced by the language development in the brain. In the brain there is systematical processes show us the stages of producing human language based on the age from the basic level to the advance. In the normal child the language development is so complete, where it is from how he or she vocalizes the intonation until the complex sentences.

Child age is seen as an essential moment to develop the language competence. It will give positive contribution to the human if in the child age the parents optimizing the child’s brain work. It is because the ability to absorb much information at the first age is advanced. In speaking ability most children begin speaking during their second year. They know at least 50 words and to be combining them in short phrases. In the next step of age they learn how to create, and maintain, larger language units such as conversation. In the following table shows us the language development of childhood;     

    

Age of Child	Typical Language Development
6 Months	·      Cries in different ways to say “I’m hurt, wet, hungry, or lonely.” ·      Makes noises to voice displeasure or satisfaction ·      Babbles ·      Recognizes and looks for familiar voices and sounds.
12 Months	·      Waves bye-bye. ·      Responds to name. ·      Understands names of some familiar objects. ·      Shows interest in picture books. ·      Pays attention to conversation. ·      Says first word (maybe). ·      Babbles expressively as if talking. ·      Says “Da-da” and “Ma-ma”
18 Months	·      Identifies family members and familiar objects. ·      Points to a few body parts such as nose, ears. ·      Follows simple, one-step instructions. ·      Says two or more words. ·      Imitates familiar noises like cars, planes, birds. ·      Repeats a few words. ·      Looks at person talking. ·      Says “Hi” or “Bye” if reminded. ·      Uses expressions like “Oh-oh.” ·      Asks for something by pointing or using one word. ·      Identifies an object in a picture book.
2 Years	·      Says about 50 words, but can understand many more. ·      Echoes single words that are spoken by someone else. ·      Talks to self and jabbers expressively. ·      Says names of toys and familiar objects. ·      Uses two to three word sentences like “Daddy bye-bye,” “All gone.” ·      Hums or tries to sing simple songs. ·      Listens to short rhymes or fingerplays. ·      Points to eyes, ears, or nose when asked. ·      Uses the words “Bye,” “Hi,” “Please,” and “Thank you” if prompted.
3 years	·      Identifies up to 10 pictures in a book when objects are named. ·      Uses simple phrases and sentences. ·      Responds when called by name. ·      Responds to simple directions. ·      Starts to say plural and past tense words. ·      Enjoys simple stories, rhymes, and songs. ·      Uses two- to three-word sentences. ·      Enjoys looking at books. ·      Points to eyes, ears, or nose when asked. ·      Repeats words spoken by someone else. ·      Vocabulary expands up to 500 words.
4 years	·      Talks so 75 to 80 percent of speech is understandable. ·      Says own first and last name. ·      Understands location words like over, under, on, and in. ·      Understands now, soon, and later. ·      Asks who, what, where, and why questions. ·      Talks in complete sentences of 3 to 5 words: “Mommy is drinking juice.” “There’s a big dog.” ·      Stumbles over words sometimes—usually not a sign of stuttering. ·      Enjoys repeating words and sounds over and over. ·      Listens attentively to short stories and books. ·      Likes familiar stories told without any changes in words. ·      Enjoys listening to stories and repeating simple rhymes. ·      Enjoys telling simple stories from pictures or books. ·      Likes to sing and can carry a simple tune. ·      Recognizes common everyday sounds. ·      Identifies common colors such as red, blue, yellow, green.
5 years	·      Recognizes some letters if taught and may be able to print own name. ·      Recognizes familiar words in simple books or signs (STOP sign, fast food signs). ·      Speaks in fairly complex sentences—“The baby ate the cookie before I could put it on the table.” ·      Enjoys singing simple songs, rhymes, and nonsense words. ·      Adapts language to listener’s level of understanding. To baby sister: “Daddy go bye-bye.” To mother: “Daddy went to the store.” ·      Learns name, address, and phone number if taught. ·      Asks and answers who, what, why, where, and what if questions. ·      Names six to eight colors and three shapes. ·      Follows two unrelated directions. “Put your milk on the table and get your coat on.” ·      Likes to talk and carries on elaborate conversations. ·      Likes to shock others by using “forbidden” words. ·      Loves to tell jokes that may not make any sense to adults.
6 Years	·      Speaks with correct grammar and word form. ·      Expresses self in pretend play. ·      Writes first name, some letters, and numbers. ·      Reads simple words.

(Pm-1529f : 2004)

In the table above shows clearly the stages of language processing in the brain. It tells us a period when the child learns to use language and develop ability to think about the abstract concept. The process of mental lexicon in the brain will work normally if no disturbance on the children and the cell of motoric system in the brain not death. The children who got language disorders have lower motorist skills than the normal. The children in the language disorder will hard to explore the language skill because there is a correlation between the motorist disturbance and language development. The coordination of each part of body especially the organ which contributes to the language capacity and oral motor system show us the complex link on producing words and organ activation. In processing of language development, children acquiring a language face two lexical tasks: learning new words and organizing it to uniquely distinguish each word from every other. During this process, children are also learning the phonological system, and it is likely that advances in lexical and phonological development influence one another. Mostly the children learn the initial language from their family. It is the basic words which have important in developing language competent and mental lexicon among them. The development of language on children following some steps which start from paralinguistic steps goes to linguistics. In the linguistic phase the development of words have complex process to make someone advance in acquiring the language. The process deals with in constructing one word, more than one word, sentence, and become complex words or able to distinguish the words. In constructing one word the children will use a word to state their complex thought. We will comprehend their want from looking their face, mimic and gesture. The next step is constructing more than one word, where in this step they are able to make the simple sentence consist of two words. The parent will start to interact with their children in form of simple sentence. Then the last step is the children able to differentiate the words. Here the children will produce and use words in plural form then fluency in interaction. These processes will run normally if the children do not get disorder in developing the language toward daily interaction, for instance the factors are from biology, cognition and environment. The factors influence to developing human’s language capacity and the intelligence level.

Development of language can not be separated with the development of speaking. The language development is influenced by the area where the children grow up. If the children got problem in developing language, the process of producing sound will be disorder. They will hard in communication because the factor of disability in producing sound and less in making concept of language in the brain. In the golden age where the production of language competency is needed to develop, they need more attention to avoid them from language disorder and disability in interaction.  The speech and language disorder show the problem in communication and social interaction which deals with organ speech production. In organ speech production stands million neurological cells which work systematically in the brain controlling the system of human speech. It is different than animal because the human brain cells system arrange complexity including the structure itself. The human brain has ability to understand abstract concept, like being able to understand what love and happiness are, what an alphabet and what words are while the animal brain can not do it. Then human brain is also able to store many languages and thousand of dialects with comprehend the syntax or communicate in complex sentences while the animals just understand the simple words and tones. So the human brain is unlimited and the animal brain is limited.

Early childhood is a time of amazing physical, cognitive, social and mental development. The cognitive abilities associated with memory and thinking. In the childhood the brain is able to acquire much information speedily especially language competence. Chomsky stated in López (2004), that a child acquire and not learn a language because language is acquired without any explicit instruction, that is, nobody teaches the child to talk. So the parent has important role to sets up a repertoire of responses by reinforcing many instances of a response. Meanwhile Skinner argued that parents were very important as reinforcing agents and, therefore, molders of the child’s verbal behavior. There is no doubt that their contribution as providers of linguistic material, on which the child’s cognitive system works, is essential.

The complex neurological structure will trouble if the coordination between the nerve system in the wernicke and memory not working effective. It is because the neurological in the broca system has important role to process of the language. It means that impossible the human will acquire language without brain and its function. For children who are unable to develop their own speech because of physical-motor impairment. The disturbance of language development will make the children disorder in producing language. The developmental language disorder explained by Benson and Haith (2009) in their book where there are three factors contribute to disorder of processing language on children, namely Articulation and expressive dysfluency disorders, Disorders of receptive and expressive language, and Higher-order language syndromes. In terms of Articulation and expressive dysfluency disorders is categorized into phonological (pure articulation) disorder, Dysfluency (stuttering and cluttering), and Verbal dyspraxia. While in Disorders of receptive and expressive language the children will get Phonologic syntactic syndrome, and Verbal auditory agnosia (VAA). And the last term is Higher-order language syndromes categorized into Lexical syntactic syndrome, and Semantic pragmatic syndrome. Those number factors make the mechanism of acquiring language does not work well therefore the children with the disorder are often unable to comprehend anything surround them. There are special treatments for children to make them not getting disorder in expressing the language such as first, detect the cause of the language disturbance. In this approach we have to categorize the language disturbance of children for instance they are less in comprehend or distinguish the sound, less in memory and producing the language. Second, giving a number of approach deals with the process of strengthen receiving language. The process can be behavioral approach and interactive approach. And the last treatment is consulted to the specialist.

CONCLUSION 

Human being has a complete system in the brain created by God (Allah SWT) which is able to store number information. It is larger capacity than the advance computer system. The information will be processed by million neuron cells become what need by human being such as intelligent and language competence. The metal development can be developed since the early childhood. It is because it called as golden age, anything can be acquired anything can be developed in the age. Need for the parents to use the amazing time inserting number abilities to the children in order to make them not getting disturbance especially in producing language for the next age level.