Things Are What They Do: Katherine Nelson's Functional Approach to Language and Cognition

This article attempts to summarize Katherine Nelson's theoretical and empirical contributions to the ontogenetic study of language and cognition. Nelson's approach has consistently emphasized the function of language and linguistic concepts in children's larger conceptual and social lives and, conversely, how children's emerging understanding of the function of linguistic symbols in larger conceptual and social structures makes language acquisition possible in the first place. This approach has led to an especially fruitful body of theoretical and empirical work.