Learning Language

"Implicit knowledge makes language structures available for automatic use but not reflections. Children learn to speak without instruction; they absorb linguistic rules as a sponge absorbs water. Every language is intricate, but non is chaotic; the underlying uniformities reveal themselves to the neural sysmtems poised to pluck recurring patterns out of a sea of experience."
from "A General Theory of Love"
Thomas Lews, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon

Not only do children learn the general gramatical aspects of language through repeatedly being exposed to it, but they also learn the implications of words and their meanings. Therefore the way the think about and speak of things is all learned and, frankly, circumstancial. A "tree" to a child from North American Suburbia might mean something completely different than a "tree" to a child in a small logging twn somewhere in Oregon.