The Cognition Project Listening to Babies: Lila Gleitman
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Feb 19, 2026 Lila Gleitman, renowned psycholinguist who shaped research on how children acquire language. She recounts her shift from English to linguistics and debates with major figures. Listens to data from blind and deaf children, studies word-to-world mapping, and explains how syntax helps learn abstract meanings. She also describes building interdisciplinary research at Penn.
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A Child Sparked A Research Shift
- Lila Gleitman became fascinated by language when her own child started talking and she watched acquisition firsthand.
- That personal experience shifted her to study what children know, not just what they say.
Test Knowledge Not Just Utterances
- Gleitman argued you must test what children know (judgments) rather than only record what they say.
- She showed two-to-four-year-olds can make grammaticality judgments revealing underlying knowledge.
Deprivation Studies Reveal Innate Structure
- Gleitman used deprived populations to separate innate structure from input-driven learning.
- Blind and deaf children still develop core linguistic distinctions, implying strong internal constraints.