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Is language, as food, a basic human need? Judging __1__ from the drastic experiment of Frederick in the 13th century it may be. Hoping to discover what language a child would speak if he heard mother __2__ tongue, he told the nurses to keep silent.
Today no such drastic deprivation exists as ordered __3__ by Frederick. Furthermore, some children are still __4__ 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 away and they might never be __5__ learned so easily again.
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 up to be of high IQ. Recent __6__ evidence suggests that an infant is born of the __7__ capacity to speak. But speech has to be triggered,and this depends on interaction between the mother and the child,where the mother realizes the cues and __8__ signals in the child's babbling, grasping, crying,smiling, and responds to it. Insensitivity of the __9__ mother to these signals dulls the interation because the child gets discouraged and sends out only obvious signals. Sensitivity to the child's verbal cues is __10__ essential to the growth and development of language.
