Language and Language Acquisition

F. LOWENTHAL University of Mons Mons, Belgium In September 1980, researchers from many different countries and working in disciplines as varied as philosophy, psychology, neurology, mathematics, education, linguistics, sociology, and others we forget to mention, again met in Mons to discuss problems concerning Language and Language Acquisition.

Conflicting opinions among researchers not only from different disciplines, but also within a same discipline, led to many a lively discussion.

This book attempts to recreate the atmosphere of the conference, by reproducing the different papers, some of which were rewritten after the initial presentation and discussion-session, and by giving a summary of each discussion session to enable the reader to understand how each participant reacted.

Obviously, we accept full responsibility for these summaries: we hope we have understood correctly what each participant meant.

This also holds for the special session devoted to an attempt to define the concept of "language".

We suggest that further meetings should study language and context simultaneously, within the framework of a "CONTEXTUAL LINGUISTICS".