Words, Plans, Things, and Locations: Interactions Between Semantic and Cognitive Development in the One-Word Stage

  • Alison Gopnik
  • Andrew N. Meltzoff
Chapter
Part of the Springer Series in Cognitive Development book series (SSCOG)

Abstract

If we want to understand the interaction between semantic and cognitive development, the one-word stage is a natural place to start. Since children only use one word at a time, we don’t have to be too concerned about syntax. Fortunately, we know something about cognitive developments in this period and, even more fortunately, we have nonlinguistic ways of measuring these developments. Moreover, by looking at the very first words, we can hope to find out about the origins of meaning itself. We can witness the very first meeting of cognition and language, before they become hopelessly intertwined.

Keywords

Cognitive Development Language Development Semantic Category Relational Word Salient Object 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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© Springer-Verlag New York Inc. 1986

Authors and Affiliations

  • Alison Gopnik
  • Andrew N. Meltzoff

There are no affiliations available

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