ABSTRACT
In our concern to explain how children learn language, we have invariably assumed one or another source of development as primary. Either the infant's mind or his environment has dominated inquiry, thus sustaining the infamous nature-nurture controversy. Investigators have presumed either that the child somehow invents (creates, etc.) language and then merely adapts to conventional expressions of it; or that the child discovers (induces, etc.) it from the speech of others and must then somehow make it his own. Though both processes may well be involved, the locus of their interaction and manner of relationship are, at best, unclear. Of course, major variations appear in each theoretical camp: Mind theorists argue about whether language is essentially a genetically given faculty versus a cognitively constructed system (see the Chomsky-Piaget debate in Piattelli-Palmerini, 1980); social theorists conceive the environment in radically different ways, ranging from a reinforcement system (Skinner, 1957) to a cultural map to be progressively internalized (Vygotsky, 1962). And, despite claims by everyone that both organism and milieu must be anended to, a dichotomy of choice of primary source still inheres in theories of development.
