A Developmental Perspective on Language Acquisition 25and communication for all children develop within this cultural
context. Children learn language in the context of interacting
with others in their communities, which accounts for the
variations that occur in children from diverse cultural-linguistic
backgrounds. Culture influences many aspects of language
development including caregiver-child interaction, which effects
the social organization of these exchanges, the value of talk, and
beliefs about intentionality and language teaching ( Johnston
and Wong 2002; Taylor 1999; van Kleeck 1994). Of note, most
of the literature on child language development comes from
samples of middle-class children of European descent and the
descriptions provided here are based primarily on those samples.
Developmental models
When infants are born into this world, they do not have the
intention to share meanings through gestures or words. Despite
the infants’ lack of intentionality, parents or other caretakers are
often willing and eager to interpret their infant’s movements
and sounds as meaningful and communicative. Bloom and
Tinker (2001) described an integrative model that captures the
unfolding of the infants’ intentional states over the first year of
life before the emergence of language at the beginning of the
second year. Their model, aptly called the Intentionality Model, is
relevant to the understanding of yogic practices for infants’ and
toddlers’ speech-language development. The model describes how
the infants develop the ability to interpret (or understand) and
express (through affect, play, and speech) their intentional states,
which include beliefs, desires, and feelings about people, objects,
and events. The infants’ acts of interpreting (or understanding)
lay the groundwork for their comprehension and communication
through language. Figure 2.1 displays a diagram illustrating the