THE ACQUISITION OF INDONESIAN LEXICAL MORPHEMES BY A CHILD OF THREE-YEARS OLD.

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THE ACQUISITION OF INDONESIAN LEXICAL

MORPHEMES BY A CHILD OF THREE-YEARS OLD

A Thesis

Submitted to the English Applied Linguistics Study Program in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Magister Humaniora

By:

KARTINA RAHMADHANI RAMBE Registration Number: 8126111014

ENGLISH APPLIED LINGUISTICS STUDY PROGRAM

POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL

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ABSTRACT

Rambe, K.R. 8126111014. The Acquisition of Indonesian Lexical Morphemes by a Child of Three-Years Old. A Thesis. English Applied Linguistics Study Program, Postgraduate School, State University of Medan.2015

The objectives of this qualitative research on the acquisition of Indonesian lexical morphemes of an Indonesian child of three-years old were to (1) to find the types of Indonesian lexical morphemes acquired by a child of three-years old, (2) describe the types of Indonesian lexical morpheme acquired by the child, and (3) measure the level of Mean Length of Utterances (MLU) acquired by the child. In order to collect the data, the research instruments used were tape recorder and written down in a diary during the six times observation. Based on the analyses, there were found 82 nouns, 36 verbs, 25 adjectives, and 24 adverbs with their different numbers of types. Nouns bring the highest position among others lexical morphemes. The result of findings of this study showed that all types of Indonesian lexical morphemes, namely nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs were acquired by the child. Universal Grammar is the most dominant ways in acquiring the Indonesian lexical morpehemes. Based on Universal Grammar, she had some morphemes from her innate linguistic knowledge then followed by the imitation, she acquired the morphemes through her well-understanding, and influenced by the reinforcement, the surrounding which forced her to follow the previous utterances. In measuring MLU, she acquired 388 morphemes from 100 utterances and SKA’s MLU was 3.88. In brief it can be concluded that the Indonesian child of three-years old had acquired the types of lexical morphemes. Thus, it is suggested that the child’s language is an interesting study to be conducted, in order to encourage a child to speak and express well at the early childhood. Some suggestions are presented especially to parents, teachers and further researcher for the care of the language acquisition of the children, namely (1) parents should give stimulus of a language such as having conversation, watching movie, telling stories and listening to the music, (2) early childhood teachers need to be creative

and adaptive because the children’s needs are different and one must be aware of this, and (3) further research study to find out the more accurate result on Indonesian lexical morphemes and in the average MLU.

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ABSTRAK

Rambe, K.R. 8126111014. The Acquisition of Indonesian Lexical Morphemes by a Child of Three-Years Old. A Thesis. English Applied Linguistics Study Program, Postgraduate School, State University of Medan.2015

Tujuan dari penelitian kualitatif ini pada pemerolehan morfem leksikal bahasa Indonesia pada anak Indonesia berumur tiga tahun adalah untuk (1) menemukan jenis morfem leksikal Bahasa Indonesia yang diperoleh oleh anak berusia tiga tahun, (2) menggambarkan bagaimana jenis morfem leksikal bahasa Indonesia yang yang diperoleh anak berusia tiga tahun, dan (3) mengukur tingkat Mean

Length Utterances (MLU) yang diperoleh. Selama mengumpulkan data,

instrumen penelitian yang digunakan adalah tape recorder dan ditulis dalam catatan selama enam kali pengamatan. Berdasarkan pengamatan yang dilakukan, ditemukan 82 kata benda, 36 kata kerja, 25 kata sifat, dan 24 kata keterangan dengan jumlah jenis yang berbeda-beda. Kata benda berada ditingkat teratas dibandingan dengan jenis leksikal morfem lainnya. Hasil temuan penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa semua jenis morfem Indonesia leksikal, yaitu kata benda, kata kerja, kata sifat, dan kata keterangan yang diperoleh oleh subjek. Universal Grammar paling dominan dalam pemerolehan leksikal morfem dalam Bhasa Indonesia. Berdasarkan Universal Grammar, ia memiliki beberapa morfem dari pengetahuan bawaan linguistiknya. Kemudian diikuti dengan cara meniru, ia memperoleh morfem tersebut dengan pemahaman yang baik sedangkan bantuan, didukung oleh sekelilingnya untuk mengikuti ucapan-ucapan sebelumnya. Dalam mengukur MLU, ia memperoleh 388 morfem dari 100 ucapan dan panjang rata-rata ujaran SKA adalah 3.88. Secara singkat dapat disimpulkan bahwa anak Indonesia berumur tiga tahun telah memperoleh jenis morfem leksikal. Dengan demikian, disarankan agar pemerolehan bahasa anak merupakan studi yang menarik untuk dilakukan, untuk mendorong anak berbicara dan mengekspresikan dirinya dengan baik sejak usia dini. Disarankan terutama kepada orang tua, guru, dan peneliti lainnya lebih lanjut untuk memperhatikan pemerolehan bahasa anak-anak: (1) orang tua harus memberikan rangsangan bahasa seperti memiliki percakapan, menonton film, bercerita, dan mendengarkan musik, (2) guru pendidikan anak usia dini lebih kreatif dan adaptif karena kebutuhan anak-anak berbeda-beda dan harus disadari, dan (3) adanya penelitian lebih lanjut untuk mengetahui ketepatan pada morfem leksikal Indonesia dan Mean Length

Utterances (MLU).

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

In the name of Allah SWT, the most gracious and merciful, all praise for His mercy, guidance and loving cares which have been given to the writer, in the process of completing this thesis entitled “The Acquisition of Indonesian Lexical Morphemes by a Child of Three-Years Old”. As a compulsory in order to fulfill one of the requirements for the degree of Magister Humaniora at the English Applied Linguistics Study Program, Postgraduate School of State University of Medan.

During the process of completing the thesis, the writer has received a lot of assistance from some people. First of all, she would like to express her special appreciation to her First adviser Prof. Tina Mariany Arifin, M.A., Ph.D. for being so helpful in guiding and correcting the contents, layouts, and tenses which she could spare her valuable time not only from a near distance but also at a distance was not a real problem; and to her Second Adviser Dr. Didik Santoso, M.Pd., for being so helpful and cooperative in the supervision of writing this thesis.

Second, her thanks are extended to Prof. Dr. Busmin Gurning, M. Pd., Dr. Sri Minda Murni, M.S., and Farid Ma’ruf, Head, Secretary and Administration staff of English Applied Linguistics Study Program; and Prof. Dr. H. Abdul Muin Sibuea, M. Pd., Director of Postgraduate School, for the administrative procedures during the completion of this thesis and also all lecturers who had given very valuable knowledge through out the academic years.

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Third, great appreciation are extended to Prof.Amrin Saragih,M.A.,Ph.D., Dr. I Wayan Dirgayasa Tangkas, M.Hum., and Dr. Anni Holila Pulungan, M.Hum., as the reviewers and examiners for the valuable inputs to be included in this thesis

Then, her deepest gratitudes are expressed to her beloved parents, (Late). Mara Gading Rambe,S.Pd., and Lismanita, for everything poured to her to achieve her ambition, her brothers Akbar Khusyairi Rambe, S.Pd. and Imam Ansyari Rambe who always support, pray and motivate her in achieving further education.

She also would like to thank SKA’s parents who had given the permission

to observe SKA’s language acquistion of the Indonesian lexical morphemes which

had made the research posible to be carried out.

Then, a very special thanks to Aurora (Chairul, Dhani, Tari, Reza, Sugih, Melita, Ayu, Aisyah, Ami, Tia, Arin, Raisa and Desi) and also her best friends since senior high school till presents (Mega, Maida, Winda, Elvi, Nanda, Idris, Dicky and Adel) who have shared the colorful friendship and being good listeners for every complaint and regarding her feelings of loneliness and emptiness. Further thanks are directed to her friends and classmates Regular A1 2012 for the assistence and encouragement, especially to Azizah and Tari, for the heart to heart conversations via mobile phone, facebook and face to face chit-chat. She really appreciates the advice and encouragement on many cases.

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She would also like to thank her students who never questioned her craziness during the last year and were patience with getting their grades after the tests.

May Allah Bless Us All.

Medan, January 2015 The writer,

Kartina Rahmadhani Rambe Registration Number: 8126111014

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LIST OF TABLES

Pages

Table 2.1 Differences between Language Acquisition and Learning ... 13 Table 2.2 Brown’s Stage of MLU.. ... 30 Table 4.1 Analysis of the Lexical Morphemes Acquired by SKA ... 42 Table 4.2 The Distribution of Indonesian Lexical Morphemes

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LIST OF APPENDICES

Pages

Appendix A The Profile of the Subject ... 81

Appendix B The Profiles of Syifa’s Families ... 82

Appendix C The Identifications and the Categorization of SKA’s Utterances into the Types of Indonesian Lexical Morphemes ... 83

Appendix D The Display of SKA’s Utterances into the Type of Indonesian Lexical Morpheme ... 105

Appendix E The Types of Indonesian Nouns Acquired by SKA ... 132

Appendix F The Types of Indonesian Verbs Acquired by SKA ... 134

Appendix G Indonesian Adjectives Acquired by SKA ... 135

Appendix H The Types of Indonesian Adverbs Acquired by SKA ... 136

Appendix I The Measurement of SKA’s MLU Level ... 137

Appendix J The Transciption of SKA’s Dialogues ... 141

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1

Background of the Study

Language acquisition is a process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language, as well as to produce and use words and sentences to communicate. Language acquisition usually refers to the first-Language Acquisition, which study infants' acquisition of their native language. This is distinguished from Second-Language Acquisition(SLA), which deals with the acquisition (in both children and adults) of additional languages (David, 1999: 409).

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The process of Language acquisition can be seen as running parallel

throughout a child’s life every day. S/he learns to communicate through natural

interactions with her/his environment. The process begins in the early life of a human being and requires a healthy start, sufficient opportunities, and exposure to

a care giving environment that allows the child’s innate predisposition to learn to

communicate to function (Rossetti, 2001). More than half of the world’s

population today uses more than one language while being connected to the fundamental human activities.

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It helps the children acquire the more complex construction of the word or sentence.

The process of mastering the language is closely related to the process of acquiring the language. The process of acquiring a language in a child is naturally a process of development. This process is usually called language acquisition. In the process of the development, there are some important things that can be acquired. It involves language comprehension, language production, and language perception of the child in acquiring the language because a child is not born with the knowledge of a particular language. Some psychologists and linguists divide the problem of language acquisition into vocabulary, meaning, and grammar. There are two approaches in language acquisition.

Chomsky (1999:75) defines children in a normal life from two until six years old will acquire language with structure and vocabulary. This is possible because since birth, they have been equipped with such a device, called Language Acquisition Device (LAD). The Language Acquisition Device allows children to analyze the language they hear and extract the rules of grammar that permit them to create brand-new word. But the ability in acquiring language is not relatively same among the children. Brown (1873:90) describes five stages of language development, based on the Mean Length of Utterance (MLU).

…..Mean length of utterance (MLU) is the average number of morphemes per utterance. It is an index of expressive language development used beyond the stage of single words, when a child uses two or more words together in an utterance-which is the number of morphemes --- basic units of meaning --- toddlers can produce.

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nativists maintain their nature theory that language is basically innate, in which children were born with special unique human talent that can acquire the grammar

of a language without adults’ instruction or correction.

Language acquisition can be seen as a natural process that will occur to every normal child. Each child will experience similar stages in language development although they have different speed. Language acquisition will be impossible when a child is not interacting with the environment. Through social interaction with family members and those in the community, the child will acquire the first and second language. Therefore, each child acquires language as part of the natural process and as a result of social interaction in the community. Merry (2011: 4) states that language cannot be developed in a vacuum and there is no society alive without language. It means that language is a resource that is available to everyone in a society and the society can exist with the presence of language. There are also several factors that can influence children language acquisition, namely health, social economic status, family members, and gender. Brown (1873) states that the language development by a girl is growing faster than a boy in the first five years. It is indicated by the numbers of vocabulary acquired, the length of the sentence, and understanding of the word.

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lexical morphemes and functional morphemes. The first category is that set of ordinary nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs that we think of as the words that carry the content of the messages we convey. These free morphemes are called lexical morphemes (Chaer:2009). Peter & Terezinha (2006) state that children usually begin to produce two-morpheme words in their third year and during that year the growth in their use of affixes is rapid and extremely impressive for examples the child uttered makanan di atas meja, di atas/on/ it is kind of functional morphemes, meja /table/ it is kind of lexical morphemes. Both lexical and functional morphemes are categorized as free morpheme. The word

makanan it derivatives from word makan add with suffix ’an’, it changed the

grammatical function from verb to noun. And it is known as derivational morphemes (bound morphemes). And as the result child’s utterance consist of 4

morphemes (main+an, diatas and meja). The example of child’s utterance: Banyak

apel itu; apel/ apple/ it is kind of lexical morpheme, banyak /many/ and itu/that/, it

is kind of functional morphemes. Her utterance consist of 3 morphemes (banyak,

apel and itu ).

It is believed that children have started to associate groups of sounds with meanings and to use them to express their own intentions. Even children at the age of three to four years have acquired more than 14,000 vocabularies, complex grammatical constructions, and phonological systems of a language. It will become increasingly skillful in how they use a language in a range of setting (David, 1999).

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is also interesting to observe how the levels of the 3 years old child in mastering the language especially in acquiring the lexical morphemes. Moreover, she is also curious to observe how the environment supports the child in acquiring Bahasa

Indonesia as his/her natural language. This study will be focused on the

Indonesian lexical morphemes in a free (base) form as the consideration to measure the Mean Length of Utterances of Indonesian children at the age of 3 years.

1.2The Problems of the Study

In relation to the background of the study, the problems of the study are formulated as the following:

1. What are the types of Indonesian lexical morphemes acquired by a child of three years old?

2. How are those types of Indonesian lexical morphemes acquired by a child of three years old?

3. What level of MLU is acquired by by a child of three years old in Indonesia?

1.3The Objectives of the Study

In connection with the problems, the objectives of this study are: 1. To find out the types of Indonesian lexical morpheme produced by a

child of three years old as free morpheme.

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3. To measure the level of MLU acquired by by a child of three years old.

1.4The Scope of the Study

A study on language acquisition can cover many aspects of the children’s

progress in the process of acquiring a language. In this research, the researcher intends to observe the process of a child in acquiring the lexical morphemes as the part free morpheme that consist of noun, verb, adjective and adverb. The child

who will be observed is the researcher’s relative.

1.5The Significance of the Study

A study on language acquisition can touch many aspects of a child. Proficiency to the acquistion of a language, findings of this research is expected to provide a valuable input that can enrich the study on the development of language acquisition. It is expected that the findings can show significant relevancy to the theoretical and practical aspects.

Theoretically, the research findings can provide a basis for further

research on different stages of the children’s language acquisition and to see the

application of theories of language acquisition.

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CHAPTER V

CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

5.1Conclusions

Based on the objectives and problems of the study some outstand points can be concluded as the follow

1. SKA acquired all four types of lexical morphemes; 82 nouns, 36 verbs, 25 adjectives and 24 adverbs. from the total numbers of those lexical morphemes, nouns bring to the highest position among others because commonly a child is surrounded by things in the environment. A child focuses on the use of nouns than verbs to indicate the action.

2. By imitation, SKA acquired the language by repeating what she heard from others. In the present study, the findings showed that SKA would repeated the anonymous words and the utterances which had corrected by the surroundings. Reinforcement also found in the observation. SKA asked the unknown words and then she repeatedly said the name of the words again. Reinforcement process was also influenced by the environment and surroundings. The surroundings insist her to utter the previous ones. Universal Grammar is the basic knowledge of a language which should be supported to run well by the environments such as her parents, relatives, television shows, and songs. Based on this study, it was found that the surroundings have very much important roles.

3. After selecting 100 utterances, the total number of morphemes produced by

SKA is 388. So SKA’s MLU is 3.88. In this case, SKA produced taq questions,

compound words, and complex sentences. It indicates that SKA acquired her language well.

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5.2 Suggestions

The proces of children’s language acquisition is very interesting to be

conducted, in order to observe and to encourage children to speak and express themselves well at an early childhood teachers and parents can observe the language acquisition then try to show the correct way, in order to train the children to speak well in according to their age level.

1. Parents

Parents and families are key players to improve and maximize the lexical acquisition by children at the early age. It’s pretty safe to say that parents start talking to, and with, their children from the day they were born (and sometimes

earlier!). As a parent and a child’s first teacher, should spend thousands of hours

in conversation with the child.

Giving the direct speech to the children to stimulus of a language such as having conversation, watching movie, telling a story and listening to the music. It can help the child to produce Large number of one-word utterances

2. Early childhood teachers

Young children are not like other students. Their needs are unique and you must be aware of this. It is important to understand that you could be one of the first adults a young child has interacted with outside of his or her own family. Teachers in early education need to be creative and adaptive.

3. Other researcher

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For those not only know the language but also can make own observation due to this subject. It is suggested to motivate others who are interested to widen the scope of a similar study by doing observation to the children directly to fulfill the academies or as a requirement to master this related subject.

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THE ACQUISITION OF INDONESIAN LEXICAL MORPHEMES BY A CHILD OF THREE-YEARS OLD.