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— The tendency to acquire speech is indeed a gift of evolution. The quest for this universal capacity is at the root of every study of the child’s capacity to speak. The acquisition of language is nevertheless an interactive process. A baby must both extract the characteristics of his mother tongue and identify the modes of production that will suit its environment. Studies on the course of the child’s development between birth and the age of 2 show that besides imposed regularities, a baby’s system of acquisition is nevertheless also characterised by a certain flexibility a margin for freedom and creativity.