Discovering Linguistic Differences: Domain Specificity and the Young Child’s Awareness of Multiple Languages

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Abstract
The child’s rich and specific categorical skills have been the focus of considerable empirical research. Recent work supports the claim that even preschoolers acquire domain-specific and structured knowledge about natural kinds, on the one hand, and certain types of social and moral judgments, on the other. The present paper considers the young child’s recognition of multiple languages in light of these findings on domain specificity. We argue that the realization that more than one language exists is predicated on the emergence of metasocial as well as metalinguistic awareness, since (1) from what is known about the young child’s perception of speech, the linguistic, particularly acoustic, evidence available to the child does not warrant the inference that multiple languages exist, and (2) this realization appears to be temporally associated with changes in the preschooler’s social categorical development rather than with changes in metalinguistic awareness. We further argue that metasocial awareness is best understood as reflecting the maturation and operation of a domain-specific cognitive device ranging over limited varieties of societal kinds.

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