The Contractual Aspect of Language

Quick note: I’ve been thinking about how the first phase of the language acquisition process is about establishing a language between the child and its parents (or other persons who spend a lot of time with it). The first language is contractual, meaning that all words have to be agreed upon. Context is important, because the same word might signify different things in different contexts. And most words are unintelligible out of context.

What happens when the child gets older is that it begins using words heard at another occasion, in another context, and because the pronunciation is rough, and you don’t know the context, you don’t understand. There hasn’t been an agreement, so communication fails.

The individual languages of children between one and two years old are more different than I had anticipated. And if a parent is away for a few days, during a period of much development of vocabulary, he or she gets behind in the contractual process. The other parent has to be present to transfer meanings as new words are used.

This is what happens to adults as well, although we’re capable of explaining when we see that the other party doesn’t understand what we mean. But we might as well miss that others don’t interpret things the same way as ourselves.