From Jane Henderson, London, UK
Your discussion of the importance for language development of the human ability to generalise was fascinating (3 June, p 38). It brought to mind my eldest son's early forays into speech.
With a limited vocabulary – barely half a dozen words – his favourite utterance was “me-mill”, a mispronunciation of “windmill”. He applied this to anything that showed circular motion: concrete mixers, windmills, hoops – and pictures of these. He could clearly both generalise and recognise symbolic representation from a very early age. This led to a game where he would spot a “me-mill” and I would spend the next little while working out what he had seen.
He is now a research scientist.
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