Experienceenriches language by rooting its structures in the robust structures of perceived things(perceiving the skin as sunburned fills out the meaning of “My skin is sunburned”)
for - key insight - language - induction leads to general categories - neonates experience reality as a continuous, unbroken stream of consciousness - To form objects required object permanence - which in turn requires us to impute general categories first, - which is constructed upon a process of induction - based on the raw material of particular, remembered gestaltic experiences - ideas ( and therefore words) are essentially constructed categories that allow us to unite entire series of remembered, gestaltic experiences of phenomenological reality - Consider the author's example of sunburned skin: - Suppose the is an infant for whom the word 'skin' does not have a meaning. - The infant may have experienced many separate pre-linguistic, gestaltic experiences involving his skin: - sunburned skin - itchy skin - skin scalded by hot water - skin that is cold - dirty skin from playing in the dirt - clean skin after waking the dirt off - cut skin from a knife cutting it accidentally in the kitchen - bandaged and healed skin - All of these gestaltic experiences, when accompanied by the appropriate vocalisations of the caretaker who is present that use the word 'skin' help the infant to construct the category meaning of the word 'skin' - Early language training is an induction-intensive process - Unless we learn how to construct abstract categories at a young age, we cannot become proficient abstract language users as adults - By abstract, I mean the category nature of word s and ideas, which give them their flexibility and modularity