CLASP
The Centre for Linguistic Theory and Studies in Probability

Language as (Graded) Expertise

Children acquire language as they interact with adults from infancy onwards. Adults-parents and caretakers-are ‘expert speakers’ and they guide children’s earliest steps in interaction, from gaze, to smiles, to reaching, to attempting to communicate. Although very young children can communicate some things early on by pointing and reaching, or by pushing things away, the nonverbal options here are limited in scope. Language offers a lot more. But to acquire language, children need extensive exposure in interaction. In this talk, I will review some of the evidence for how children manage the complex feat of acquiring the basics of a language and how to use it, by around age four- but just the basics. The process of acquiring a language, for all the things we can learn to do with language, lasts a good deal longer.