Language, perception, and space

This dissertation focuses on the contribution of perception to language acquisition through the use of recent work on statistical learning. Dominant language acquisition theories are based either on modular accounts of neurobiology or an infant's capacity for intentionality, where language emerges from dyadic associations grounded in joint attentional frames. In this dissertation I argue that statistical learning is a general cognitive mechanism that does not require appeal to modularity or intentionality. I place statistical learning within spatial cognition and suggest that what is humanly achievable with language is analogous to the human ability to combine and recombine elements in our perceptual space. The most significant contribution of this dissertation is placing language within the perceptual system, which inspires new means of telling this story. I show how the organizing force of perception allows for the activity of language to proceed through a neglected insight belonging to Elizabeth Spelke --- that infants appear capable of perceiving structure (Spelke, 1976). I then make use of developmental research that supports the idea of a foundational, structural sense possessed by infants across a range of general, nonlinguistic activities. The activity of language is itself a mirror of the fine-grained, structural distinctions achievable in human perception. Here, Timothy Williamson's philosophical work on vagueness (1992, 1994) suggests how cognition is heavily reliant on principles that work best when a margin for error is itself a component of perception.