The Ontogeny of Language: From Precursors to First Utterances

Origins of Language: Early Language Universals

• Language universals, such as nouns and verbs, are expressions of reference and predication using linguistic symbols.
• These universals are considered emergent phenomena, stemming from universal aspects of human cognition, communicative needs, and vocal-auditory processing.
• There is limited evidence in typological literature for the existence of contentful language universals typically associated with an innate universal grammar.

Ontogenetic Origins of Language

• The human capacity for symbolic communication emerges predictably across cultures around 1 year of age (Tomasello, 1995a, 1999).
• This emergence is linked to a cluster of new social-cognitive skills, critical for language acquisition:
  • The establishment of joint attentional frames.
  • The understanding of communicative intentions.
  • A specific type of cultural learning known as role reversal imitation.
• Collectively, these are referred to as skills of intention-reading, highlighting the fundamental social-cognitive ability underpinning them.
• Prelinguistic infants possess remarkable pattern-finding skills when exposed to auditory sequences, which are preparatory for acquiring grammatical constructions.
• However, these grammatical skills cannot fully develop until children acquire linguistic symbols, which, in turn, depends on key social-cognitive developments around 1 year of age.

Prelinguistic Infant Capabilities and the "$$12$ Months" Puzzle

• Prelinguistic infants face a profound challenge: they not only don't know what adults are trying to say but also don't even realize adults are trying to say something, or what