... is one year old, he cannot communicate verbally, but he can be given his favourite toy by pointing to it, ask to be lifted up by outstretching his arms, and accept items such as food dishes. He is simultaneously absorbing all the sounds around him, anticipating the day that he can identify each individual phoneme in his mother tongue as having meaning, and be able to associate the sound to the object it represents- "mama" being one of the most common first words- this is not unusual as the mother is the usually the figure in closest contact with the child. These individual sounds are the building blocks of a complex language, all the rules of which are learned implicitly in the space of a few short years, a feat very few adults among us could accomplish. This is why children are called 'the greatest learners in the world'. Nonverbal ...

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