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Why do infants begin to talk? Language as an unintended consequence*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

John L. Locke
John L. Locke*
Affiliation:
Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School
*
Address for correspondence: Department of Human Communication Sciences, 18A Claremont Crescent, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TA, UK. [email protected].
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Abstract

Scholars have addressed a range of questions about language development, but for some reason have neglected to ask why infants begin to talk. Biologists often prefer ‘how’ to ‘why’ questions, but it is possible to ask about the immediate consequences of developing behaviours – an acceptable strategy for attacking causation – and psycholinguists can study the immediate consequences to the infant of behaviours that lead to linguistic competence. This process is demonstrated with a series of illustrative proposals as to the short- and long-term consequences of vocal learning and utterance storage, two developmental phases that lead to talking, as well as the act of talking itself. The goal is to encourage investigation of behavioural dispositions that nudge the child, by degrees, towards proficiency in the use of spoken language.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , June 1996 , pp. 251 - 268
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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Footnotes

[*]

This paper originated with a talk at the University of Warwick while the author was on sabbatical leave at the Sub-Department of Animal Behaviour, University of Cambridge. Gratitude is expressed to Glyn Collis for a stimulating discussion of the subject matter and to several ethologists, developmental psychologists, evolutionary biologists, and developmental psycholinguists, including Patrick Bateson, David Bjorklund, Robin Cooper, Kurt Fischer, Marc Hauser, Peter Hobson, Peter Mundy, Aniruddh Patel, Michael Smith, Michael Studdert-Kennedy, Colwyn Trevarthen, and Elke Zimmermann for helpful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. Thanks are also due to Julia Priest for editorial assistance.

References

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