How the limits of the mind shape human language
The Conversation
When we speak, our sentences emerge as a flowing stream of sound. Unless we are really annoyed, We. Don’t. Speak. One. Word. At. A. Time. But this property of speech is not how language itself is organised. Sentences consist of words: discrete units of meaning and linguistic form that we can combine in myriad ways to make sentences. This disconnect between speech and language raises a problem. How do children, at an incredibly young age, learn the discrete units of their languages from the messy sound waves they hear?
