How does speech production develop in children?

Essay from the year 2014 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,7, University of Stirling (Literature and Languages), course: Language and the Brain, language: English, abstract: Children fullfill a huge task when they successfully learn their mother tongue. Other than adults who attempt to learn a new language they do not have to study vocabulary or grammar explicitly, but they seem to absorb all the words and rules which are presented to them. This essay will shed some light on language development in children, so it deals with infantine speech perception and production, the main stages of this process and the mental lexicon. I attempt to show that children's mental lexicon and adult's mental lexicon are essentially the same.