Language Acquisition Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 243-5):

As recounted by [Margaret] Donaldson [in Children's Minds], John Macnamara has proposed that children are able to learn language because they first make sense of situations involving human interactions. Children make sense of things first and, above all, they make sense of what people do. Donaldson's summary makes it clear that children can see things from another's point of view, not just their own. They reason deductively and carry out inference at age four or so, much more skilfully than had been previously supposed. It also seems that a child first makes sense of situations and of human intentions and then of what is said. This means that language is not independent of the rest of cognition. Therefore we need to account for language acquisition not only developmentally but also evolutionarily.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, in ontogenesis, language and the cultural context construed by language develop together.

Their evolution (phylogenesis) provides the semogenic context for their development in the individual (ontogenesis), which provides the semogenic context for their instantiation; and conversely, their instantiation provides the material for their ontogenesis, which provides the material for their evolution.

On this model, the cognitive processes that the child uses to make sense of situations are the mental processes that construe experience of the non-semiotic domain as the meanings of language.