Language, culture and the embodiment of spatial cognition

Our aim in this article is to argue that an adequate account of semantic development in early first language acquisition requires a theory and methodology that synthesize the insights of cognitive and cultural linguistics with a Vygotskian sociocultural approach to human development. This involved recasting and extending the notion of embodiment, which is a central philosophical underpinning of cognitive linguistics. We discuss evidence from the cross-linguistic and cross-cultural study of spatial semantic development, and argue that current controversies regarding language-specific acquisition strategies and universal cognitive bases of semantic development may best be resolved by viewing the issue of "linguistic relativity" in a sociocultural, as well as a grammatical, perspective.