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THE IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGE FOR LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT: LINGUISTIC DETERMINISM IN THE 1980s *
Author(s) -
Bloom Lois
Publication year - 1981
Publication title -
annals of the new york academy of sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.712
H-Index - 248
eISSN - 1749-6632
pISSN - 0077-8923
DOI - 10.1111/j.1749-6632.1981.tb42007.x
Subject(s) - psycholinguistics , linguistics , syntax , determinism , grammar , annals , citation , cognitive science , psychology , computer science , philosophy , history , library science , cognition , classics , epistemology , neuroscience
Many factors contribute to the process of language development. The child‘s context, for example, is one source of the meanings of early utterances, inasmuch as children talk about what they do and what they see. The child’s social context is one source of the child’s communicative intentions, inasmuch as children talk to other persons and learn to use language in the context of social and pragmatic events. And, at the same time, both intentions and meanings are mediated by the child’s cognition; what children talk about and how they use language to interact with other persons depend upon what they know. These factors, context and cognition, together contribute in by now obvious ways to language development. However, one factor that necessarily interacts with these and other factors in less obvious ways is the formal structure of the target language that the child is learning: language is important for language deveIopment. The language that children learn-the target language in the child‘s community-is, itself, a determining factor in how and when the different structures of the language are acquired.