Professor Thomas Hun-tak Lee gave a lecture on the logical structures in early child language on March 4, 2011 at Nanzan University. In his lecture, we learned many things. First of all, in logical structures from the perspective of language acquisition, we learned that there are conflicting findings on the development of quantifiers in cognitive development and the complexity of logical structures in human language. Professor Lee also noted that children may differ from adults in their logical structures for the logical structures in human language go beyond the list of logical connectives permitted in standard logic. He next discussed logical structures in early child language. We learned about existential quantification, universal quantification, and the scope of both quantifiers. There are differences in what the children acquire at what age depending on their language. The last part was about some generalizations on the development of logical structures. It seems like the early logical structures provide an enlightening window on cognitive development and Universal Grammar. The lecture by Professor Lee was interesting and there were so many things that we learned about how infants acquire the logical structures of the language. It was interesting to see his comparisons of English with Mandarin and Cantonese. Not just that he used many examples and cited references, he showed us several graphs and pictures to make the content more lucid.

By Nanako A