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Critical Period Hypothesis refers to a long-standing debate in linguistics and language acquisition over the extent to which the ability to acquire language is biologically linked to age. The hypothesis claims that there is an ideal 'window' of time to acquire language in a linguistically rich environment, after which this is no longer possible. The Critical Period Hypothesis states that the first few years of life is the crucial time in which an individual can acquire a first language if presented with adequate stimuli. If language input doesn't occur until after this time, the individual will never achieve a full command of language - especially grammatical systems. In the field of language acquisition, the hypothesis that there is a critical or sensitive period for language acquisition plays an important role. In the late fifties and sixties, Penfield and Roberts (1959) and Lenneberg (1967) were the first to propose that there was a...

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