ABSTRACT
Development of language by the human infant is as nearly universal as walking, and the child escapes from it only at the peril of severe physical, mental, or emotional disability. The child at the end of the first year of life is seemingly equipped cognitively and socially with the basic skills necessary to learn language. The last half of the second year sees a renewed progression that leads finally to a new level of functioning culminating in the acquisition of the adult language system beginning about the age of two. The chapter presents a hypothesis about development during that time within and without language, evidence from existing literature. Infant cognition has been viewed in terms of the child’s understanding of the physical world, in particular the understanding of objects and relations between objects— for example, movement in space, causality, and temporal order.
