One of the first things that should strike any half observant parent is the speed and apparent accuracy in which a child proceeds to learning his or her (1)______ own language. This remarkably rapid development seems to fly in the face of many known facts about the nature of the language—so much so that it (2)______ has become widely accepted in the scientific community to think language (3)______ and its acquisition as one of many utterly unexplainable mysteries that beset us in our daily lives. Even the most clever of scientists today do not know where to begin with trying to unravel the range of complexities that all of language brings. Even so, the child moves ever onward, seemingly with little deference to this so-called mystery and proceed with little effort to crack the sacred code (4)______ nonetheless. How could this be? Firstly, parents provide with very little in the way (5)______ of language instruction to the child—contrary with what might be believed, (6)______ parents do not teach their children to speak. Most parent wouldnt even have (7)______ the mean in which to explain language overtly to a child even if they want- (8)______ ed. By the time a child enters into pre-school, she has more or less mastered (9)______ much of her target language. However, in light of these remarkable achieve ments, children do seem to go through varying degrees of stages along the way to their full mastery. It is this notion of stages of acquisition which has (10)______ interested the developmental linguists most. (1)