Children's language learning and the development of intersubjectivity

One of the greatest continuing mysteries about the human species is that of child language acquisition - how children manage to learn, in a few years, systems so complex that no computer can yet model their use, yet proceeding from an initial state that is flexible enough to let them learn languages of wildly differing structures. Another great mystery is the development of intersubjectivity - the uniquely human capacity for understanding and sharing intentions that enables cultural learning and the making of the social world. We will advance the understanding of both of these phenomena by studying them in relation to each other, in a locale where neither has been systematically studied before - the central highlands of New Guinea.