Abstract

The contemporary connectionist position regarding language has resulted in a kind of reconciliation between the behavioral interpretation of the nature and acquisition of language and the initial cognitive position that thought, or the capacity for thought, precedes the acquisition of a natural language. Behavior analysts believe that language is behaviorally reviewable, but thought is not unless it is considered nothing mare than sub-vocal language. Such a position is, of course, required by the behavior analytic epistemology, with the exception that visual images can also be considered non language-linked thought. However, the communicative part of thought in which most of us are primarily interested is reducible to natural language so far as the behavior analytic position is concerned. Cognitivists, however, do not necessarily equate natural language with thought since children display concept learning and perceptual integration before they acquire language. Behavior analysts, as we have seen, make the distinction that pre-linguistic children and animals "know how," but only creatures with language "know that." Nevertheless, many cognitivists separate the processes of thought form those processes involved in the use of a natural language. Fodor holds thatLearning a language involves learning what the predicates of a language mean. Learning what the predicates of a language mean involves learning determination of the extension of these predicates. Learning a determination of the extension of the predicates involves learning that they fall under some truth rules. But one cannot learn that P falls under R unless one has a language in which P and R can be represented.Fodor concludes that there must be language elements already present in order for a child to learn a natural language. This implies that the organism comes equipped, presumably by the evolutionary development of the species, with certain basic language abilities. Having accepted one or more of a few variations of this argument, cognitively oriented researches turned to internal processes to account for much, but not all, of the nature of language. Golinkoff and Hirsh-Pasek have summarized a number of different types of theories concerned with the acquisition and use of language. Before these systems are discussed it is necessary to define a number of terms critical to their understanding