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Profiling Pragmatic Abilities in the Emerging Language of Young Children

  • Chapter
Pragmatics of Language

Abstract

Two things that distinguish human development from that of other primates are the extended length of human childhood and the relative immaturity of human infants at birth. Gould (1985) has explained humans’ lengthened childhood by the process of evolutionary slowdown in maturation called neoteny, which literally means “holding on to youth.” Relative to the extension of human childhood, Gould estimated that human infants should have a gestation period of about 18 months. However, because of the evolutionary growth of the human infant’s brain, the female pelvic bone could not accommodate the size of the infant skull after an 18-month gestation period. Therefore, one of two processes had to occur: either the female’s pelvic bone had to increase dramatically in size or human infants had to be born earlier when their craniums were still small enough to fit through the pelvic bone. Women can be grateful to know that the evolutionary outcome was not a pelvis large enough to accommodate a baby the size of a 9-monthold infant in present chronology. Instead, the outcome was a shortening of the gestation period, or what Gould referred to as an “accelerated birth.” Gould (1977, 1985) suggested that human babies “are born as embryos” and cited evidence that the rate of maturation during the first nine months of postnatal life is very rapid and matches prenatal fetal development.

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  1. Amy M. Wetherby
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  1. McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

    Tanya M. Gallagher Ph.D.

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Wetherby, A.M. (1991). Profiling Pragmatic Abilities in the Emerging Language of Young Children. In: Gallagher, T.M. (eds) Pragmatics of Language. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7156-2_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7156-2_9

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