Zoe Learns to Talk

Abstract

The answer to the question of how language came to be will emerge from a clear knowledge of what it is. That knowledge, in turn, is well served by an examination of first-language acquisition, for in observing what goes on when children are first brought within the fold of speech we come to see quite clearly what it is they learn. We come upon a field of readily graspable and significant simple language-games. These instances make it evident that our language is a cultural extension of preexisting interaction patterns. Furthermore, it is plausible to think that in part at least the child’s first steps into language recapitulate those of the species. We can get an idea of what our species accomplished by observing children coming to a mastery of speech.

What we are supplying are really remarks on the natural history of human beings;we are not contributing curiosities however, but observations which no one has doubted, but which have escaped remark only because they are always before our eyes.

Wittgenstein