THE ACQUISITION OF INDONESIAN DECLARATIVE SENTENCE BY FOUR-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN.

THE ACQUISITION OF INDONESIAN DECLARATIVE SENTENCE

BY THE FOUR-YEAR- OLD CHILDREN

A Thesis

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

By:

SARNI ERNAWATY PURBA Registration Number : 8126112032

ENGLISH APPLIED LINGUISTICS STUDY PROGRAM

POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL

STATE UNIVERSITY OF MEDAN

▸ Baca selengkapnya: the sentence implies that

ABSTRACT

Purba, Sarni Ernawaty . The Acquisition of Indonesian Declarative Sentence by Four-Year-Old Children. Thesis English Applied Linguistics, Post Graduate Program. State University of Medan. 2014

ABSTRAK

Purba, Sarni Ernawaty. Nim: 8126112032. Perolehan Kalimat Deklaratif Bahasa Indonesia oleh Anak Pada Usia Empat Tahun. Tesis. Linguistik Terapan Bahasa Inggris, Programsarjana. Universitas Negeri Medan. 2014

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, the researcher would like to express her thankfulness to God the

Almighty who has been blessing her to complete this thesis in order to fulfill one of the

requirements in obtaining the degree of Magister Humaniora of the English Applied

Linguistics Study Program Graduate School at State University of Medan. The researcher

found many difficulties during her study and in completing this study. However, people

around her always give her help so difficulties could be solved. Therefore, she wishes to

acknowledge her very special thanks to her first and second advisors, Dr. Anni Holila

Pulungan, M.Hum. and Dr. I Wayan Dirgayasa Tangkas, M.Hum., for their valuable

guidance, encouragement, kindness and advice to broaden her perception and knowledge

on this topic.

Her gratitude also goes to the Head of English applied Linguistics Study Program

and as her review Prof. Dr. Busmin Gurning, M.Pd, for his support, advice and help

during her study and in completing this study. Her great gratitude is also due to her

reviewers Dr. Sri Minda Murni, M.S. and Dr. Siti Aisyah Ginting, M. Pd. For their

constructive comments and suggestions for this research. Her sincere thankfulness is given

to all lecturers for their precious knowledge , experiences, advice and guidance thoughout

her academic years at the Post Graduate School of State University of Medan. Aslo deep

gratitude to all staff of Graduate Program at the State University of Medan.

She is also indebted to all my classmates Bang Pollung, Kak Trisna, Yulima, Wina,

Desi, Nurhalima, Wandira, Irma, Rina, Purnama, Rodiani, Bambang, Zulmi, Zamal, Mas

Agung, Rianto, Indra, Ayu, Chitra, Elbi and Deddy for their loving care.

Finally, she would like to express her sincere thankfulness to her mother and her sisters

very special one, her small family, especially for her Husband, Anggiat Sept Parulian

Sihombing and her loving sons, Rema Daud Tua, Rena Patiencius Hiram and Rexa

Hotiggo Blessing for their loving care, prayer, support, and encouragement.

Medan, December 2014

The writer

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1.2 The Research Problem of the Study...11

1.3 The Objectives of the Study...12

1.4 The Scope of the Stduy...13

1.5 The Significance of the Study...14

CHAPTER II. REVIEW OF LITERATURE ………...15

2.1First Language Acquisition...15

2.2 Theory of First Language Acquisition...17

2.3 Stages of Language Development...22

2.4 The Acquisition of Indonesian Sentences by four-year-old children…………...25

2.5 The Types of Sentences...26

2.6 The Type of declarative sentence pattern………..34

3.3 The Technique of Collecting Data……….………...46

3.4 The Instrument of collecting Data……….47

3.5 The Trustworthiness ……….….………...47

3.6 The Technique of Analyzing the data………49

CHAPTER IV. DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS….………...51

4.1 The Data Analysis………..52

4.2 Findings………66

4.3 Discussion………..………66

CHAPTER V. CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS……….71

5.1 Conclusions ………..……….71

5.2 Suggestions………71

References………73

Lists of Table

Pages

Table 1. The Roles and Function of Sentence Constituents...………….31

Table. 2 The Subjects………...………...…...45

Table 3. The Running Pattern by the Subjects……..………..52

Table 4. The Being Pattern by the Subjects……….………56

List of Appendices

Appendix 1. The Acquisition of Indonesian Declarative Sentences by MW…...77

Appendix 2. The Acquisition of Indonesian Declarative Sentences by RHB…...78

1

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1 The Background of the Study

Human being is born with the capacity to communicate with

others. They communicate by using language to express their feelings

and opinions. Language is very complex. It has sound system that

allow the production of words and sentences. A language has not only a

structure what linguistic try to capture with their rules but also a

function to which that structure is put. It is the medium through which

the manners, moral, and mythology of a society are passed on to the

next generation.

Human language is really distinct from other beings, which its

capacity to acquire and use language. Human being’s capacity to

communicate with others relates to his/her innate capacity language

environment from others make people, adults and children are able to

communicate. In fact, how children acquire their language is a very

amazing process. It is believed that by the time children are 3 or 4 year

old, they typically have acquired thousands of vocabulary words,

complex grammatical and phonological system, and equally complex

rules for how to use their language appropriately in many social settings

(Gleason and Ratner: 1998:348). The study of language acqusition can

2

psychologically and intellectually. The children’s relationship and

surroundings effect on them of using language.

In addition to, Krashen (1989) says that acquisition is a

subconscious process that is identical to the process used in the first

language acquisition in all important ways.

Moreover, a range of theories of language acqusition have been

occured in order to explain the process of acquiring the language. The

conflict between the nativism and behaviorism has become the serious

debate. The nativism maintain their nature that language is innateness.

Goodluck (1991:3) The linguistic system invoves rules too abstract and

complex to be learnt without the aid of innate knowldege about the

nature of the system children are born with an innate capacity for

language acquisition, and that this makes them acquire language easy

and discover the grammar of a language automatically. Even since an

infant, a baby begins to use a language to communicate his/her

presence of a scheme, which is the true source of the response.

Perhaps even more remarkable is the fact that children-before

3

grammar of a language. Before they can add 2 + 2 children are conjoining

sentences, asking the question, selecting appropriate pronouns, negating

sentences, using the syntactic, phonological, morphological, and semantic

rules of the gramar. Yet, children are not taught language as they are taught

artihmetic (Fromkin and Rodman 1983:325).This possible because since the

birth, they have been equipped with such a device,called Language

Acquisition Device (LAD). The Language Acquisition Device guides them

to understand the rules and principles governing the language they expose.

In addition, Clark (2003: 1) added that babies are not born talking.

They learn language immediately from birth. They hear sounds and words,

meaning and construction. They need to know what to use, where and when,

how to integrate language with other modes of communication. How to make

them understand and how to understand others. During the infants, children

learn to express things by speech sound, as the time goes by they have

progress in language development. But their ability and speed in acquring the

language differ one another.

The stages of children language development has its own

chrasteristics within in the five year period. Goodluck (1996 : 75) argues that

that by the end of the third year, the child may be producing a range of

complex sentences types (complements verbs and relative clauses) and a

four-year-old frequently gives the impression of being a fully fluent of a

language comparable to tshe adult language he is learning, if not identical to

4

years) children have syntactic system that it turn to the syntax of the language

around them and reflects principles adult grammars, such as the pricilples

of binding theory. By the end of the third year, the child may be producing a

range of complex sentences types (complements verbs and relative clauses)

and a four-year-old frequently gives the impression of being a fully fluent of

a language comparable to the adult language he is learning, if not identical to

it.

In line with that, Radford (2009:1-2) stated that syntax is the study of

the way in which phrases and sentences are structured out of the words.

Within traditional grammar, the syntax of a language is described in terms

of a taxonomy of the range of different types of syntactic structures found in

the language. The central assumption underpinning syntactic analysis in

traditional grammar is that phrases and sentences are built up of a series of

constituents (i.e. syntactic units), each of which belongs to a specific

grammatical category and serves a specific grammatical function. For

example, in relation to the syntax of a simple sentence like:

(1) Students protested.

It would traditionally be said that the sentence consists of two constituents

(the word students and the word protested), that each of these constituents

belongs to a specific grammatical category (students being a plural noun and

protested a past tense verb) and that each serves a specific grammatical

function (students being the subject of the sentence, and protested being the

5

of a clause which is finite in nature (by virtue of denoting an event taking

place at a specific time), and has the semantic function of expressing a

proposition which is declarative in force (in that it is used to make a statement rather than e.g. ask a question). Accordingly, a traditional grammar

of English would tell us that the simplest type of finite declarative clause

found in English is a sentence like (1), in which a nominal subject is followed

by a verbal predicate.

Further, Clark (2003 :25) states that language is a central factor in the

social life of infants. The user of language they are exposed to provide the

context in which children , themselves become proficient at communicating

wants an desires, affect and interest, requests and instructions, questions and

observation, and commentary on all the other contents of everyday life. It

means that children elaborate language function. They extend their repertoire

of speech act beyond the representative and directives and expressives. They

also add to their repertoire for conveying each speech act and learn how to

express them indirectly in more and more ways. As they get older, they also

become more sensitive to what their listener knows when deciding what to

present as given and a new. Children have to build up structure and and

function at the same time. As they learn more devices with which to convey

different functions. And as they learn more about function, they extend the

uses to which different structures can be put.

There are some explanations about the main points which are

6

1. Children hear more speech from both familiar and unfamiliar people, they

must add to their memory store of words form. (Eve Clark, 2003: 75).

2. Children learn the systems of grammar, phonology, syntax, semantics,

5. Grammatical morphemes are morphological forms based on grammatical

rules including inflection. Children begin to produce grammatical

morphemes properly at the age of about 3;0 years (Clark, 2003).

6. Children acquire all the major, syntactic structures of their language very

early by the age of three.

The development of children’s language is influenced by adults. In

children’s language development, the role of the input is simply to trigger

the innate knowledge that is encoded in the genes and to allow the child to

map this innate knowledge onto the language that she/he is hearing (e.g.

Hyams, 1986). In others, the input is given a more substantial role. For

example, in contructivist theories of syntax development, the child’s task is

7

similar ways. (Tomasello, 2003). Thus, the amount and type of input that

child hears has a crucial role to play in her/his ability to build the syntax of

her/his language (Rowland, 2014). While agreeing that human children are

endowed with abilities that make possible certain kinds of linguistic

knowledge not demonstrable in other species, the focus is less on innate

abilities and more on the process of acquisition of the whole of a language.

Starting with as few assumptions as possible about innate availability of

linguistic categories and knowledge of linguistic structure, one approach to

early syntactic development is to see how much of it can be described with a

series of frame-and-slot grammars, each successive one of which has a larger

number of linguistic categories .

Normal children progress through a predictable sequence of stages

and master the basic syntactic relation of simple sentence at a relatively early

age. Despite the commonalities, however, there is evidence of individual

differences in syntactic growth among children. Most of this work concern

the early stages of syntactic development where variation have been found in

the rate and course of acquisition (Fenson et al., 1994).

The idea that children can use syntactic information to acquire

meanings rests on a number of premises. Children must be able to build some

kind of structural representation, parse sentences, categorize words, and

figure out the grammatical function of arguments. Only in this way can they

map grammatical functions to thematic roles and infer a plausible meaning

8

This question in turn raises another: how do children break into syntax? The

answer is important for understanding how they can access the kind of

structural representation that linguists attribute to sentences.

In Indonesia, Darjowidjodo (2000) has conducted his distinguised

research of children language acquisition. Echa, his own grandaughter, who

lives in Java Island is observed for her five years of the Indonesian

acquisition. It is found that Echa’s sentences at the age of four has develop,

where she has acquired the simple, complex, compound and

compound-complex sentences. Echa has acquired simple sentences successfuly at aged

four. Her formal language at school had influence on her language

acquisition. Her syntax acquisition has two parts, they are phrases and

sentences. She has acquired phrases such as: harus sudah pernah nonton

dulu (sebelum eyang bisa bercerita)-(Umur 4;3), dengan cepat, dengan

hati-hati and dengan senang. And her simple sentences such as –Hanoman

sukanya didepan, - Power rangers terbangnya pake pesawat, -Hanoman yang

baca, -Echa yang nulis.

Moreover, according to Gustanti (2013) that Declarative sentence

patterns in terms of syntactic spoken children at age 4 are Subject (S), The

Subject-Predicate (S-P), Predicate-Object (P-O), Predicate-Subject (P-S),

Subject-Predicat-Object (S-P-O), Subject-Predicate-Compliment (S-P-Pel),

Subject-Adverb (S-Ket) and Subject-Predicate-Adverb (S-P-Ket). It means

that the four-year-old children has mastered the syntactic rules governing

9

phenomenon, the writer has curiosity of his own child and her friend’ child

whether the two children has the same patterns of their declarative sentences

they produce. Based my observation over the children, here are some their

utterances.

My own child’s utterances:

Aku yang bikin susu,

S P O

Cuma kita yang di rumah,

S Ket

Mami bisa makan sayur,

S P O

Aku pegang perut

S P O

Meanwhile, my friend’s child utterances:

Mobil besar itu di kamar Gres

S Ket

Nanti aku pulang

10

Aku bisa terbang kayak pesawat

S P Ket

Aku main robot

S P O

Therefore, the writer realizes that the acquisition of declarative

sentence patterns of the children are really different which inspires her to

conduct a research on language acquisition. How do children learn the syntax

of their language?

Moreover, Rowland (2014:4) states that it is also important to note

that differences across languages are not the only differences between

children. There are also individual differences between children acquiring the

same language: some children are faster and others are slower, and some

children are born with cognitive impairments that prevent them from

acquiring language without a lot of specialist help. This phenomenon has led

the writer to make a small observation on children at the age of four year

old. Despite any possible weakness, this point of view the writers intends to

focus on the declarative sentence patterns and to find out the factors which

support it. It will give a great deal of knowledge about the psychological and

intellectual functioning of the children as they have been born with some

form of innate knowledge.

To expand this, Hoff (2003) also says that individual differences in

language acquisition could be the result of several factors including (a)

11

global effects of differences in family functioning and home environment; (c)

specific effects of differences in language learning experiences.

Moreover, the researcher is curious whether the surroundings support

their Bahasa Indonesian as their first languages. In this period of children,

each of them comes from different background which influence to their

language. This study will be focused on the acquisition of Indonesian

declarative sentences patterns by the four-year-old children and supporting

factors on it.

1.2 The Problems of the Study

Based on the previous explanation on the background the research

problems are formulated as follows.

1. What Indonesian declarative sentence patterns are acquired by the

four-year-old children?

2. Which type of the Indonesian declarative sentence patterns are

dominantly acquired by the four-year-old children ?

3. How do the four-year old children develop Indonesian declarative

12

1.3 The Objectives of the Study

Based on the formulation of problems above, the objectives of this

study are:

1. to discover Indonesian declarative sentence patterns are acquired

by the children.

2. to find out the Indonesian declaratives sentence patterns are

dominantly acquired by the children

3. to elaborate how the four-year-old children develop the

declarative sentences patterns the way they do.

1.4 The Scope of the Study.

The process of child’s language acquisition is a large area to be

studied because it has many aspects to be discovered such as morphological,

phonological, syntactical and pragmatical aspects. To narrow this study the

researcher does not include all of them. However, this study is focused on the

acquisition of Indonesian declarative sentences patterns by the children of

four year old in acquiring their Indonesian language as the first language. The

two factors, the health and mental factors are also influential to the

13

As long as they do not have any serious disease or mental problems, she

considers that they have physical and mental health. In short, the subjects of

this study are the only healthy children.

1.5 The Significance of the Study

A study is academically conducted to enrich on the development of

knowledge. The findings of this research certainly will have valuable inputs

that can enrich the study on the language acquisition. It is hoped, that the

findings would have valuable contributions to the theoretical and practical

aspects.

a. Theoretically, these findings can be made as guidelines for adults

especially parents who pay serious attention to their children’s language

acquisition.These findings will be very useful for references in assisting

the children in the process of acquiring the sentence. And other language

researchers who has interest in conducting further-depth study on

language acqusition by comparing the result of this study they can enrich

the knowledge of language acquisition.

b. Practically, the findings will be valuable for parents who pay serious

attention to their children’s language acquisition.These findings make

them more active and creative in presenting language to their children.

14

language so that children can acquired sentences in nature way whatever

71

CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

5.1 Conclusion

From the data and data analysis in chapter four is concluded that :

1. There are 40 Indonesian Declarative Sentences produced by the two subjects.

Michael Wisnu produced 6 running pattern which has sub-patterns S-P-Adv, P-S,

Adv-S-P, P-S-Adv, S-P-Adv and Adv-S-P, 9 being pattern which has sub-patterns

S-P and S, 5 doing/seeing patterns which has sub-patterns O-Adv-S, S-O,

P-O-Adv-S, Adv-S-P-O-Adv and S-P. However, Rexa H. Blessing produced 4

running pattern which has sub-patterns P-S, Adv-Adv-S-P, P-S, and P, 12 being

patterns which has sub-patterns S-P, Adv-Adv-P-S, Adv-S-P, P-S and P, 4

doing/seeing patterns which has sub-patterns S-Adv-P-O, S-P-O, O-S-P, O-S-P and

Adv-P-O.

2. The subjects produced the being pattern and sub-pattern S-P dominantly.

3. The subjects were basically influenced both ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’ process in

producing their sentences. It is also true that differences across the languages are

not only differences between children. There are also individual differences

between children producing the same language. Each sentence of the two subjects

has its own characteristic.

72

After the conclusion of the acquisition of Indonesian declarative sentence by

four-year children was made, the researcher would suggest to parents and

researchers.

1. To the parent

The parents assist the children in the process of language acquisition. Parents

allow them to communicate freely to produce sentences in different situation

and there should be someone to converse with them in order to acquire many

kinds of words they have heard because children produce sentences based on

what they hear. The parents should be creative helping the children in the

process of acquiring their sentences. Parents encourage the children to

communicate and produce the correct sentences and if they make mistakes, give

the exact one.

2.To other researchers

This is suggested that there will be some further research about this study,

particularly, it will be deal with the acquisition of declarative sentence by

children with large number of subject. Perhaps, there will be so many things

different. Additional, another research done is to get better understanding of this

73

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