Language Development in Toddlers

The nature versus nurture argument has long been a source of contentious disagreement when it comes to childhood development. One of the most important aspects in this back and forth debate has to do with how children develop language skills. Language development contains certain fundamental similarities that can be found all across the globe, indicating that there may be much about it that is innately acquired through genetic hard-wiring. Language ability cannot in any serious sense be considered uniquely and totally defined by genetics, obviously, since so many ethnic differences exist, such as the inability for certain phonemes to be expressed across the board by racial subgroups regardless of the environment in which an individual grows up. And yet the fact that infants first begin making sounds that are similar and the fact that development typically proceeds on predictable basis leads one to conclude that genetics must certainly play a large process in the process as well.

There is widespread interest in the subject of language development and how much is genetics and how much is environment; so much interest that some of the biggest names in science have turned their attention to it at one time or another. An aspect of the debate that makes it of such interest for study is that language and communication seems not to necessarily be an evolutionary survival need, but rather seems to have been created out of societal necessity.