Cognitive Aspects of Language Acquisition

Abstract

In the first stages of his language acquisition, a child learns that the elements of a class C are named by the expression E by observing a few of these elements and noting that they are called E in his community. C is the generalization class—the category—which is determined by the salient features of the observed elements. These features can be directly perceptible, such as the shape of a dog, or indirectly perceptible, such as the dog's capacity to eat or bark. In the beginning, class C is usually incorrect (i.e., it is different from the class which is normally associated with E). But, by undergoing the appropriate experiences, the child can gradually come closer to the correct class. These experiences are discussed in the article. Then, attention is drawn to the ambiguity of the notion of concept formation when used in connection with the first stages of language acquisition. In particular, a distinction must be made between learning the concept, which corresponds to learning to associate the expression E with the correct class, and learning a concept, which corresponds to learning to associate with the term a class that may be incorrect. Finally, it is shown that the conclusions arrived at in the article make it possible to explain the results of some recent psycholinguistic investigations.