ABSTRACT
From early on children find themselves corrected. This happens in all aspects of their lives, from being told not to pull books out of bookshelves or saucepans out of cupboards, to being prevented from pulling out handfuls of little Joanne’s hair. Children learn through constant negation and prohibition of (parts of) their actions: don’t do this, don’t do that! The learning of concepts is no exception. A child sees an animal, and says (in some phonological form): ‘That’s a dog.’ The parent, uncle or neighbour responds, ‘No, that’s not a dog, that’s a horse.’ Whereas before the concept ‘dog’ covered the whole class of furred animals, it has now become more restricted; it does not now apply to ‘horse’. By a constant process of reduction and negation children learn the concepts which apply in the social and physical world around them. Occasionally a concept is introduced in a non-negative fashion: ‘Look, Sally, a truck!’, or, ‘Wave bye-bye to Auntie!’—with the child’s arm being shaken vigorously up and down.
