ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we describe a line of research, essentially independent of the Piagetian
tradition, which, nevertheless, bears on some of the central tenets of Piagetian thinking. We
describe some specific results concerning language learning in a Mayan Indian communi-
ty in southern Mexico, where the essential spatial discriminations in language and cognition
employ Euclidean rather than topological or projective concepts and where these linguis-
tic terms-despite their apparent complexity-seem to be learned very early by children.
