Some Evidence for the Cognitive Primacy of Categorization and Its Functional Basis.

Categorization of sound patterns and of objects and events in the real world is basic to learning a language. This thesis was developed by Brown (1956) who termed first language learning "a process of cognitive socialization" involving "the coordination of speech cate gories with categories of the nonlinguistic world [p. 247]." More recently, Lenneberg (1967) has argued that categorization must be the basic cognitive process: "Thus categorization by a principle, or the formation of an (abstract) concept is apparently prior to and more primitive than the association of a sound pattern with a specific sensory experience." And, "the abstractness underlying meanings in general ... may best be understood by considering concept-formation the primary cognitive process, and naming (as well as acquiring a name) the secondary cognitive process. Concepts . . . are not so much the product of man's cognition, but conceptualization is the cognitive process itself [pp. 332-333, italics in the original]." In this view, both differentiation and "interrelating of categories or the perception of and tolerance for transformations" derive from the basic mode of organization which is categorization. Thus, for Lenne berg, words tag cognitive processes and it is words that make these processes seem more static than they actually are. The difference between Brown's (1956) view and Lenneberg's lies in the distinction between categories that exist ready-made in the world outside the child (linguistic and nonlinguistic) and cate gories generated by the child himself. Essentially this is the distinc