Where does language come from? The role of reflexive enculturation in language development

How does the developing child bridge the ontological gap from the empirical, measurable world of behavioral patterns, anatomical structures, and neurological processes to the world of the linguistic phenomena referred to by the expressions of commonsense metalinguistic discourse: words, meanings, names, truth, languages, understanding, and so on? Rejecting the positions both of sceptical eliminativism and of linguistic immanence, this paper argues that the linguistic identity of language emerges only gradually, by means of the child’s increasingly competent participation in the discursive processes of reflexive enculturation.