I understand that we probably understand words because we notice when we're young that we notice that certain words represent certain things but how do we understand words that represent things that are abstract?
i think that when we think that if we repeat words that we repeat and then continue to continue repeating words that we are repeating, people get confused about what point you are trying to make to people that are confused about what point you are trying to make.
Turns out the human brain isn’t just a sophisticated computer but a learning machine capable of perceiving a 4 dimensional universe (if you include time) with all of its derivatives and abstractions Hotwater
I think it's pretty much the same process, when we are young we are introduced to words that represent simple abstract concepts ("happy and "sad" for example) and we recognise that these things may not exist physically but have recogniseable physical effects which we can feel internally and also notice in others (crying, laughing etc). As we get older, the abstract concepts become more complex, and their effects more subtle.
There may be a study or two in recent years that are kind of challenging some long held notions to an extent, but generally speaking it takes about half a decade for children to start to develop many abstract concepts, such as object permanence, like to understand if an object or person is hidden from sight but not removed from the surroudings that they are still there and also consideration of other's viewpoints, as young children tend to have egocentrism and not a very adept ability to do this. The frontal lobe, the part of our brains that is correlated with a lot of abstract thinking and reasoning is slower to develop then other parts. A lot of language comprehension gets integrated in a part of the brain called "Wernicke's Area" which is in the temporal lobe and surrounding areas but a lot of these brain regions form connectivity and pathways that allow for complex interactions with other regions.
Language is so complex, and the training children receive in using it is so poor, that the brain must possess innate language acquisition modules. This is called the 'argument from the poverty of the stimulus' (championed by Noam Chomsky though you certainly don't have to buy his exact theories about it, I for one do not). I believe he also coined the term "language acquisition device", though again I don't believe his particular theories about it. Of course there can be no doubt that classical and operant conditioning play a role in language acquisition and development, but ingenious studies have been devised that essentially prove that these types of learning cannot account for language acquisition. The conclusion then is that the human brain comes into the world with many assumptions about language built into it and that in addition to ordinary forms of learning explains how language develops. A fantastic way to get deeper into this subject would be to look into the work of Steven Pinker. He has done a lot of work on exactly how children acquire language, and even if you disagree with his exact ideas he does a great job of demonstrating that classical models of learning do not account for human language. I especially recommend "Words and Rules", and "The Language Instinct". To briefly touch on some evidence supporting the existence of "language acquisition devices": 1) In some cultures parents don't coach their infants on how to speak. They do not really speak directly to their children until their children begin speaking. In these cultures children begin speaking at the same time that children in cultures with excessive coaching begin speaking. 2) Children can properly alter the tense of words they have never heard before, indeed words that were invented on the spot during the study. 3) Children will incorrectly (but ingeniously) apply rules to irregular verbs. For example "I runned on the playground" instead of ran. Clearly their parents did not train them to say runned, but the child has applied the rule of adding 'ed' to make it past tense. It takes classical training to teach them that run is irregular and the past tense is ran.
recursive analysis of context. that's how i learned to talk human as an infant. motivated by observation of the advantage adults had of being able to communicate to each other.
