Child and the World

The Child and the World

There is nothing more wonderful to watch than a small child, 2 or 3 years old, speaking to its mother, holding a conversation with its mother. It seems miraculous that in such a short period a child can reach so far in its use of this most precious of human possessions, language.

In this book I consider how it is possible that a child can acquire all the complexities of its parent language and amass a large lexicon to refer to objects and actions of all kinds, through language to mirror the world in which it finds itself. The miracle can be explained by accepting that all aspects of language are not arbitrary. They derive from the brain systems controlling perception and action.

We internalise perceived patternings in the world and transfer them from our eyes and other senses to the motor patternings of speech. Children acquire words effortlessly because the motor programs generated by perception of particular objects or actions are matched instantaneously with the motor programs generated by the sound structure of the words for the given objects and actions. This is the essence of the motor theory of language.