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cognitive linguistics and linguistic typology 1091
chapter 41

COGNITIVE
LINGUISTICS AND
FIRST LANGUAGE
ACQUISITION

michael tomasello
1. Introduction

Human beings are the only organisms on planet Earth who actively attempt to
direct and share the attention of conspecifics to outside entities. In human ontogeny
this begins nonlinguistically, as human infants employ a variety of nonlinguistic

means of attention-directing and attention-sharing, including such things as
pointing to interesting events and holding up objects to show them to other people.
These species-unique communicative behaviors set the stage for language acqui-
sition by establishing the ‘‘referential triangle’’ (me-you-it, or alternatively, speaker-
listener-topic) within which all future linguistic communication will take place.
Some time after their first birthday, infants begin to make their first serious
attempts to acquire and use pieces of a conventional language. These attempts are not
aimed at learning words, quite simply because infants at this age do not know what
words are (see Wittgenstein’s 1953 critique of the assumption that the young child
‘‘already knows a language, just not this one’’). They are aimed at learning the com-
municative behaviors by means of which adults attempt to manipulate other per-
sons’ attention, namely, utterances. Children thus learn first to comprehend and
produce whole utterances they have heard other people using, although they may do
this initially in child-like form (e.g., they may learn just one part of the adult’s
utterance to express the entire communicative intention—a so-called holophrase).
Over time, children then learn to extract from these utterances words and other
functionally significant pieces of language for future use as constituents in other ut-
terances. In addition, as in all areas of their cognitive and social development, chil-
dren gradually begin to construct abstract categories and schemas—out of both whole
utterances and utterance constituents such as words and phrases—for compre-
hending and producing linguistic creations that they have never before heard. This
process operates differently for different languages, of course, although with some
universal features across languages as well.
To investigate the acquisition process in more detail, what is needed most ur-
gently is an adequate description of precisely what it is children are attempting to
acquire—that is, a description of both language in general and the specific language
being acquired by a given child in particular. Generative Grammar, with its abstract,
essentialistic, quasi-mathematical categories that cannot change ontogenetically, is
obviously of no help. The most useful descriptions for developmental researchers
come from Functional and Cognitive Linguistics, because these approaches allow

researchers to talk explicitly about the symbols, conceptualizations, and communi-
cative functions that constitute human linguistic competence, and they allow them to
do this in a way that can be adapted flexibly to changes that occur over developmental
time.
In this chapter, I review some of the best-known and most interesting work on
language acquisition from within the framework of Functional-Cognitive Lin-
guistics, broadly construed. This includes most importantly work on (i) meaning
and conceptualization and (ii) usage and grammar (grammatical constructions).
Although the term is often used more narrowly, I will call this general theoretical
approach ‘‘usage-based’’ to emphasize the assumption common to all functional
and cognitive approaches that linguistic structure emerges from use, both his-
torically and ontogenetically. This is as opposed to the dominant view in the field
of language acquisition today in which ‘‘core’’ grammatical competence is innately
given, and all that develops is peripheral skills involving the lexicon, pragmatics,
information processing, and the like (e.g., Pinker 1994).
2. Meaning and Conceptualization
in Child Language

Lakoff (1990) argues that what distinguishes Cognitive Linguistics most clearly from
other approaches to human language is the cognitive commitment, which enjoins
linguists to perform their analyses in theoretical terms compatible with other research
cognitive linguistics and first language acquisition 1093
in the cognitive sciences. Similarly, Langacker (1987a) argues that languages are best
described and explained exclusively in terms of more basic processes of human cog-
nition and communication. This foundational role for general cognition does not
preclude the possibility, of course, that acquiring a particular language may lead the
people of a particular cultural group to construe the world to some extent in their
own individual way. Developmental research has approached the issue from both
of these perspectives, that is, in terms of the cognitive foundations of language ac-
quisition and in terms of the role of language acquisition in shaping cognitive

development.
2.1. Image Schemas and Word Meanings
Mandler (1992) attempted to specify some of the most important conceptualiza-
tions that enable human infants to acquire a language. Along with the conceptu-
alization of objects, infants must also conceptualize the dynamic and relational
aspects of their experience such as animacy, containment, support, and the like.
Mandler posited that these more dynamic aspects of infant condition are best
characterized in terms of image schemas as investigated by Johnson (1987), Lakoff
(1987), Langacker (1987a), and Talmy (1988). For example, Mandler proposed that
to account for the cognitive dimensions of early language we must posit that young
children understand a number of different kinds of motion, both inanimate and
animate (illustrated in figure 41.1). These image schemas are based in children’s
perception of the world, but they are more general and abstract than any particular
perceptual experience; they are conceptualizations that result from a process of
‘‘perceptual analysis’’ in which the commonalities across a number of specific ex-
periences are extracted. Mandler (1992: 587) thus proposes that ‘‘image schemas
provide a level of representation intermediate between perception and language
that facilitates the process of language acquisition.’’ Other image schemas she dis-
cusses are well-known examples from the Cognitive Linguistics literature, such as
containment, force, part-whole, link, path, and so on. Following cognitive
linguists still further, she also hypothesizes that such logical relations as if-then
derive from these concrete, perceptually based image schemas.
Focusing on the earliest stages of language acquisition, Gentner (1982) and
Gentner and Boroditsky (2001) provided a plausible explanation for why many
children acquiring many different languages typically learn nouns earlier than verbs.
In brief, her answer was that the nouns children learn early in development are
prototypically used to refer to concrete objects, and concrete objects are more easily
individuated from their environmental surroundings than are states, actions, and
processes. Gentner’s hypothesis may be seen as providing developmental support
for Langacker’s (1987b) analysis in which nouns are seen as words used to construe

some experience as a ‘‘bounded entity’’ whereas verbs are used to construe some
experience as a state or process (e.g., explosion vs. explode), with nouns being
autonomous and verbs being dependent (in the sense of only being comprehensible
1094 michael tomasello
as the state or activity of a preexisting participant of some type). Gentner’s analysis
and data thus show that words for autonomous entities, that is, nominals, are
generally learned first and that the prototype of a nominal referent is a spatially
discrete individual object—with the noun category later extending from this
prototype to less concrete bounded entities.
In the case of verbs, I attempted to specify—using Langacker-like image-schema
diagrams—the particular conceptualizations underlying one English-speaking child’s
early use of verbs (Tomasello 1992). I began with the premise that young children do
not conceptualize the world in the same way as adults. Therefore, in providing de-
scriptions of the conceptualizations underlying children’s language, it was necessary
to invoke a specific theory of the nature of those cognitive structures at a particular
period of ontogeny. Invoking Piaget’s ([1935] 1952,[1937] 1954)theoryofinfantcog-
nition, I proposed that the meanings of particular verbs could be specified in terms of
four basic conceptual elements: space, time, causality, and objects. That is, following
Langacker (1987b), a verb was seen as depicting a process that unfolded in a series of
discrete sequential steps, typically with an object changing location or state across
this time (with perhaps the causal source of that motion integrally involved as well).
The hypothesized conceptualizations underlying this child’s early language thus had
the virtue of being things that, insofar as Piaget’s cognitive theory is correct, he or she
could potentially have constructed from his or her own experience as the child at-
tempted to comprehend and use these words in communicating with adults. Fig-
ure 41.2 provides for some examples. The diagram for get indicates t hat some per-
son [P] acts as an agent to bring an object [o] from Location X to himself or herself.
The diagram for back indicates that an object left the child’s sphere of influence (to
Locations X) and that he or she now wants it to return (manner unspecified). The
Figure 41.1. Mandler’s (1992) analysis of some important dynamic image schemas un-

derlying early language development ([A] represents a source of self-generated motion)
cognitive linguistics and first language acquisition 1095
diagrams for have and give indicate possession (shaded circles), with the main differ-
ence being that give is more specific about where the object is now (P1’s possession)
and how P2 comes to possess it (P1 causes). Finally, the diagram for share indicates
that the child wishes to possess an object simultaneously with another person for
some time, whereas the diagram for use indicates that he or she wants for the moment
exclusive control but not possession—the child will return it later. As development
proceeded, more complex conceptualizations were constructed on the basis of both
nonlinguistic and linguistic experience.
Budwig (1989) explicitly investigated the causality and agency underlying some
of children’s earliest utterances. Specifically, she investigated how young English-
speaking children refer to the self. It turns out that in the second and third years of
life, children say such non-adult-like things as Me jump and My build tower, along
with some adult-like things such as I like peas. In a detailed analysis of how the
children used these different words, Budwig determined that the words me and my
were used most often for prototypical agency, whereas I was used most often for
references to self as experiencer. Invoking prototype theory, Budwig claimed that
agent and experiencer are two different ways to construe the role of the self in
various activities. Essentially, the agent is a causal source—in terms of Talmy’s
(1988) ‘‘force-dynamic schema’’—in a way that experiencer is not.
There has been no systematic work on the metaphorical dimensions of young
children’s early language. Although there are some studies of young children’s un-
derstanding of explicit metaphors (Winner 1988) and a few theoretical speculations
Figure 41.2. Hypothesized conceptualizations underlying one child’s early use of some
verbs of possession
1096 michael tomasello
about ‘‘primary metaphors’’ that might apply to children (Grady and Taub 1996),
there is basically nothing like a systematic study of how young children relate, for
example, concrete uses of prepositions as in out of the box to less concrete uses as

in out of her mind—and indeed there is very little research on children’s under-
standing of abstract words and expressions in general. The one main exception is
Johnson’s (1999) ‘‘constructional grounding’’ hypothesis, in which young children
are aided in the acquisition of, for example, the epistemic meaning of see (e.g., I see
your point) by first being exposed to uses of see that are ambiguous between the
perceptual and epistemic meanings (e.g., Let’s see what’s in the box). There are good
reasons for the relative neglect of these issues, as in all cases it is very difficult to
determine the extent to which children are understanding an expression as meta-
phorical rather than as straightforwardly conventional. But there should be ways
using experimental methods to make such determinations, and so this would seem
to be an area of developmental research wide open for exploration by cognitive
linguists.
2.2. Social Cognition, Perspective-Taking, and Culture
The acquisition of language also has important foundations in children’s social
cognition. Most importantly, the ability to understand linguistic symbols as devices
for directing attention emerges out of young children’s broader nonlinguistic skills
for participating with adults in joint attentional interactions (Bruner 1983). These
may be different to some degree in different cultures.
In Tomasello (1999), I argue that the very same social cognitive skills that
enable children to follow into and direct adult attention nonlinguistically are also
responsible for children’s ability to understand the different perspectives and con-
struals that linguistic symbols embody. In general, all of the different kinds of con-
struals outlined by Langacker (1987a), Fillmore (1988b), Talmy (1996), and others,
are part and parcel of language acquisition practically from the beginning. Clark
(1997), in particular, has documented the myriad different ways that young children
may indicate different perspectives linguistically. In general, children learn quite
early to make distinctions based on granularity-specificity (chair, furniture, thing),
perspective (chase-flee, buy-sell), function (father, lawyer, guest), spatial perspective
(here-there, come-go), and many other of the categories of linguistic construal
outlined by cognitive linguists. Clark (1997: 1) concludes: ‘‘The many-perspectives

account of lexical acquisition proposes that children learn to take alternative per-
spectives along with the words they acquire, and, therefore, from the first, readily
apply multiple terms to the same objects or events.’’
Clancy (2003) demonstrated that young children use some of these same social-
pragmatic skills in more extended discourse. In particular, she showed that young
Korean-speaking children make many of the same kinds of referential choices
as adults in verb-argument constructions, and thus they create the same kinds
of ‘‘preferred argument structure’’ configurations in which new information as
cognitive linguistics and first language acquisition 1097
embodied in lexical nouns occurs mostly in intransitive subjects and transitive
objects (S and O), not in transitive subjects (A). However, as Berman and Slobin
(1994) showed in their large-scale study, there is still much work to be done. In a
cross-linguistic investigation of preschool children’s ability to narrate a relatively
complex story with multiple interrelated events, they found that young children
have great difficulties in using their fledgling perspective-taking abilities in more
complex discourse interactions and narratives. In documenting the greater skills of
school-age children as compared with preschool children, they note that ‘‘younger
children take fewer expressive options because: (a) cognitively, they cannot con-
ceive of the full range of encodable perspectives; (b) communicatively, they cannot
fully assess the listener’s viewpoint; and (c) linguistically, they do not command the
full range of formal devices’’ (Berman and Slobin: 1994: 15). The overall conclusion
of their mammoth study is that children’s perspective-taking skills in language
result from a complex interaction of their cognitive and communicative skills and
the symbolic resources provided by the particular language they are learning.
Recent research has also demonstrated that particular languages play an in-
strumental role in leading young children to conceptualize and perspectivize the
world in particular ways. Of special importance empirically is the work of Choi and
Bowerman (1991). They showed that very young children, still in their second year
of life, conceptualize spatial relationships differently depending on the language
they are learning. Thus, young English-speaking and Korean-speaking children

conceptualize differently basic spatial relations of containment and support be-
cause English encodes these with prepositions such as in and on , whereas Korean
uses verbs that indicate such different kinds of things as ‘tight fitting’ and ‘loose
fitting’. Also of interest is the empirical work of Brown (2000) and de Leo
´
n(2000),
who have shown that Gentner’s (1982) hypothesis of the developmental primacy of
nouns over verbs may not hold for some Mayan languages in which verbs play a
much more important communicative role than nouns in child-adult discourse.
Recent theoretical and empirical work by Sinha and Jensen de Lo
´
pez (2000; re-
viewed in chapter 49 of this volume) extends this same perspective to a varied array
of other basic spatial concepts. Sinha (this volume, chapter 49) argues that just as
language may be said to emerge from cognition embodied in the human body, it
may also be said to emerge from cognition embodied in the culture at large.
3. Usage and Grammar
in Child Language

Perhaps the central problem in the study of child language acquisition from a
functional-cognitive point of view is the problem of how children create complex
and abstract linguistic constructions in the language they are learning. Of most
1098 michael tomasello
direct application are the ideas of Langacker (1987a) on constructional schemas,
Fillmore (1988a) and Goldberg (1995) on constructions, and Bybee (1995) on the role
of frequency-based processes such as token frequency (entrenchment) and type
frequency. Also important is cross-linguistic work demonstrating the great variety
of grammatical constructions that human beings can create and learn (e.g., Dryer
1997; Croft 2000).
3.1. Cognitive and Functional Bases

In a major statement on the cognitive bases of children’s early grammatical de-
velopment, Slobin (1985–97) proposed that young children’s prelinguistic cogni-
tion was organized into a small number of basic experiential scenes. Following the
lead of Fillmore’s (1977a, 1977b) ideas on the everyday interactional scenes and
frames that structure human language, Slobin proposed that much of children’s
early language was structured by (i) the Manipulative Activity Scene, in which an
animate agent causes a change of state in an inanimate patient, and (ii) the Figure/
Ground scene, in which a person or object moves along some spatial path. Fol-
lowing the lead of Talmy (e.g., 1985, 1988), Slobin further proposed that certain of
the concepts in these scenes were designated universally and a priori to be especially
conducive to grammatical rather than to lexical expression. Grammatical devel-
opment then consisted of children learning how their particular language encoded
these privileged concepts, with the acquisition process taking place in the context
of a number of cognitive operating principles that reflected general cognition—
which played a role in determining such things as order of acquisition, ease of
acquisition, and so forth.
In one of the most important papers in the modern study of child language
acquisition, Slobin (1997) modified his views significantly. As a result of the decade
of cross-linguistic work that he has conducted or collected together in his series
of edited volumes (e.g., Slobin 1985–97, 1997) and taking into account typologi-
cal work in general, Slobin’s revised view is that there is much too much variation
across languages (and much too rapid changes within languages) for any set of
privileged grammaticalizable notions to be designated by Mother Nature ahead of
time. In this view, universals of language structure emerge from the simultaneous
interaction of universals of human cognition, communication, and vocal-auditory
processing. The particularities of particular languages—as embodied in historically
constituted constructions of various types—then present children with a problem
space within which these universal abilities operate and create grammatical struc-
ture. The importance of Slobin’s new view—solidly grounded in the largest body of
cross-linguistic work collected to date—is its demonstration that language ac-

quisition is a complex constructive process, requiring virtually all of the child’s
cognitive resources.
The more cognitive side of this view is elaborated in Tomasello and Brooks
(1999), which characterizes children’s early linguistic productions holistically in
cognitive linguistics and first language acquisition 1099