Question: Obviously, when we are babies we know nothing at all, how do we learn what words mean when we have no background knowledge what so ever?

Joe Bathelt answered on 4 Nov 2016:

That is a great question and one that has plagued philosophers for centuries. Your suggestion that babies know nothing when they are born is called the ‘blank slate’ view and has been most notably argued by the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. However, modern research suggests that babies are not entirely blank slates. The modern view is that babies expect certain types of features around them and that parents help to break these down to an appropriate level. For example, parents naturally simplify their language by using shorter simple words that elongated and repeated a lot. Further, infants are experts at following their parent’s eye gaze. There are repeated episodes where the baby will look at the parent, then at an object, and then back at the parent. Our current understanding suggests that this ‘shared gaze’ can create a binding so that babies can bring the sound of words together with an object. Later, the infant will imitate sound and refine the use of these words according to feedback from people around them.