ABSTRACT
This chapter studies the work of the Swiss linguist Jean Piaget and his understanding of language development in children. It shows the similarity between Piaget’s stages of language development, especially as these concern the transition from the preoperational to the fully operational, and Freud’s model of the progression from unconscious, to preconscious, to conscious instantiations of language and thought. It is demonstrated that these transitions are fluid and not clearly demarcated, and that earlier precognitive modes remain present in adult language and thought. Comparisons are made between the linguistic metacognition in preliterate children and illiterate adults in order to demonstrate that recognition of words and discrete morphemes is not foundational in the development of language.
