Is language，like food，a basic human need without which a child at a critical period of life can be starved and damaged？Judging from the drastic experiment of Frederick II in the thirteenth century it may be. Hoping to discover what language a child would speak if he heard no mother tongue he told the nurses to keep silent. 语言是否像食物一样为人类的一项基本需求，在生命的关键时刻，没有它孩子就会饿死或者受到损害呢？从十三世纪弗雷德里克二世所做的严厉的试验来判断，这是可能的。为了发现一个从没听到过母语的孩子究竟会讲什么语言，他叫保姆缄默不语。 All the infants died before the first year. But clearly there was more than language deprivation here. What was missing was good mothering. Without good mothering， in the first year of life especially， the capacity to survive is seriously affected. 所有婴儿出生一年不到都夭折了。但是很明显，夭折的原因不是被剥夺了语言，而是失去母亲般的悉心照护。没有母亲般的悉心照护，特别是在生命的第一年，婴儿的成活能力受到严重影响。 Today no such drastic deprivation exists as that ordered by Frederick. Nevertheless， some children are still backward in speaking. Most often the reason for this is that the mother is insensitive to the cues and signals of the infant， whose brain is programmed to mop up language rapidly. There are critical times， it seems， when children learn more readily. If these sensitive periods are neglected， the ideal time for acquiring skills passes and they might never be learned so easily again. A bird learns to sing and to fly rapidly at the right time， but the process is slow and hard once the critical stage has passed. 在今天，像弗雷德里克下令严厉剥夺的现象已不复存在了。尽管如此，有些孩子说话仍然迟钝。究其原因，往往是母亲对婴儿的示意和信号无动于衷，而孩子的大脑这时正处在快速吸收语言的状态。看起来，确有某些关键时期，孩子们学起来相当容易。假如这段敏感的时期被忽视，获得技巧的理想时间过去了，他们可能就再也不会如此轻松地学到东西了。一只小鸟能在适当时机较快地学会鸣叫和飞翔，可是一旦关键阶段过去，学会鸣叫和—飞翔的过程就会缓慢而艰难。 Linguists suggest that speech milestones are reached in a fixed sequence and at a constant age， but there are cases where speech has started late in a child who eventually turns out to be of high IQ （Intelligence Quotient）。 At twelve weeks a baby smiles and utters vowel-like sounds； at twelve months he can speak simple words and understand simple commands； at eighteen months he has a vocabulary of three to fifty words. At three he knows about 1000 words which he can put into sentences， and at four his language differs from that of his parents in style rather than grammar. 语言学家认为，言语在一生中的各个阶段是按固定的先后顺序，在某一定的年龄分别达到的，但也有若干情况，某些孩子开始说话晚，结果其智商却很高。十二周的婴孩会笑，发出元音似的声音；十二个月的孩子可以说简单的词，懂得简单的命令；十八个月的孩子有三到五十个单词的词汇；三岁的孩子懂得一千单词，并且能够组成句子；到了四岁时，孩子的语言与其父母的语言只是在风格上而不是在语法上有所差异。 Recent evidence suggests that an infant is born with the capacity to speak. What is special about Man‘s brain，compared with that of the monkey，is the complex system which enables a child to connect the sight and feel of，say，a teddy-bear with the sound pattern ’teddy-bear‘。 And even more incredible is the young brain’s ability to pick out an order in language from the hubbub of sound around him，to analyze，to combine and recombine the parts of a language in novel ways. 近来有证据表明，婴儿生来就具有讲话能力。人的大脑与猿猴的大脑相比，就在于它是一套复杂的系统，比如说，能使婴儿在见到或摸到玩具熊时，把“玩具熊”与这个词的音联车在一起，甚至更加不可思义的是，幼小的脑子能从周围的喧嚣声中听出语言表达的某种命令，用种种新奇的方式对某个语言的成份进行分析、组合以及重新组合。 But speech has to be triggered，and this depends on interaction between the mother and the child，where the mother recognizes the cues and signals in the child‘s babbling，clinging， grasping，crying，smiling，and responds to them. Insensitivity of the mother to these signals dulls the interaction because the child gets discouraged and sends out only the obvious signals. Sensitivity to the child’s non-verbal cues is essential to the growth and development of language. 但是幼儿说话要有人逗。这得靠母亲和孩子相互影响。母亲要善于从孩子的咿咿呀呀中，以及依偎，抓，哭，笑中辨别出不同含意和信号，并且做出反应。母亲对孩子的上述信号持冷漠态度会减弱这种相互作用，因为这会使孩子扫兴，而发出的只能是些明显的信号。对孩子的非语言信号是否敏感，这对其语言的增长和发展是至关重要的。