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Updated: Mar 15, 2026

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization
Published on: April 19, 2017
Pro and con: Internal speech and the evolution of complex language
1Department of Philosophy,Dalhousie University,Halifax,NS B3H 4R2,Canada.christinabehme@gmail.com.
Abstract:
The target article by Christiansen & Chater (C&C) offers an integrated framework for the study of language acquisition and, possibly, a novel role for internal speech in language acquisition. However, the "Now-or-Never bottleneck" raises a paradox for language evolution. It seems to imply that language complexity has been either reduced over time or has remained the same. How, then, could languages as complex as ours have evolved in prelinguistic ancestors? Linguistic Platonism could offer a solution to this paradox.
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