ET, the well-known Extra-Terrestrial, learnt human language fast: ‘His ear-flap opened and he listened intently… His… circuits buzzed, assimilating, synthesizing… Thus inspired, the language centre of his marvellous brain came fully on…’ Yet ET's magical ability is almost matched by that of human children. As the American statesman Benjamin Franklin once said: ‘Teach your child to hold his tongue; he'll learn fast enough to speak.’

Children talk so readily because they instinctively know in advance what languages are like. As in a spider's web, the outline is preprogrammed, and the network is built up in a preordained sequence. The predictable way in which the language web develops is the topic of this chapter, including how adults can help, or sometimes even slow down a child's progress.

Language has a biologically organized schedule (see figure 3.1). Children everywhere follow a similar pattern. In their first few weeks, babies mostly cry. As Ronald Knox once said: ‘A loud noise at one end, and no sense of responsibility at the other.‘