ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to use what we know about concept formation in infancy to shed light on the organisation of the semantic system. In turn this work might be useful to those trying to characterise the nature of the breakdown of the semantic system under brain damage. I use the terms “conceptual” and “semantic” interchangeably here, because they are often treated as synonyms in the adult literature. However, it should be noted that the foundations of the conceptual system are laid down before language is learned and I do not mean to imply any linguistic knowledge by the use of the term “semantic”.
