ABSTRACT
The term social in the tide of this chapter is being used in two senses. In its first sense, social refers to the capacities of the infant and young child, which I argue are the source out of which language emerges. In its second sense, social refers to the context in which language acquisition occurs. Of course, the social support that adults are inclined to provide to language learners is partially a consequence of the social capacities that infants possess—the degree to which infants are socially appealing creatures. In the chapter, then, I present first an argument about the infant’s social capabilities and how they provide a context for the emergence of language, and second about the adult’s provision of social support to the learner constructing an emergent language system.
