The Acquisition Of Malay Syntax Among Five Years Old Children: Analysis From The Perspective Of Mentalist Theory

Abstract

The field of language acquisition is divided into three parts namely syntax, semantic, and phonological acquisition. Previous studies have found that children's most common types of sentences are declarative sentences compared to interrogative sentences, exclamatory sentences, and command sentences. Thus, this study discusses aspects of the acquisition of Malay syntax among Malay children using the Mentalist Theory approach by focusing on the types and patterns of Malay sentences. This study was conducted at Tunas Permata Kindergarten, Faculty of Education, UKM with five-year-old girl. The research data was obtained through a storytelling activity where the researcher showed a picture and asked the respondent to tell a story based on the picture while in the coloring activity, the respondent was asked to tell a story while doing the coloring activity. The researcher recorded the sessions using a smartphone. Children's syntax mastery level is measured using Mean Length of Utterance (MPU). The results of the study shown that the type of declarative sentences was the most used compared to interrogative sentences, exclamatory sentences, and command sentences. This means that the tendency of children to produce declarative sentences followed by other sentences shows the level of language acquisition parallel to the level of self-development of five-year-old children based on the Mentalist Theory. This respondent can also produce basic sentences according to their patterns and compound sentences. The production of basic sentence patterns is seen to be higher than compound sentence patterns.