The Child and the World

The Child and the World! There is nothing more wonderfulto watch than a small child, 2 or 3 years old, speaking toits mother, holding a conversation with its mother. Itseems miraculous that in such a short period a child can reachso far in its use of this most precious of human possessions,language. In this book I consider how it is possible that a childcan acquire all the complexities of its parent language and amassa large lexicon to refer to objects and actions of all kinds, throughlanguage to mirror the world in which it fi nds itself. The miraclecan be explained by accepting that all aspects of language arenot arbitrary.They derive from the brain systems controlling perception and action.We internalise perceived patternings in the world and transfer themfrom our eyes and other senses to the motor patternings of speech.Children acquire words effortlessly because the motor programsgenerated by perception of particular objects or actions are matchedinstantaneously with the motor programs generated by the soundstructureof the words for the given objects and actions. This is theessence of the motor theory of language