How do children learn language?

Understanding how children learn language is key to studying human communication. We propose a constructivist framework to explain language acquisition: it emphasises that children construct their language understanding over time, dynamically building it up from their experiences in the world in a structured, cognitively active way. Here we outline four core components of this framework and show how it explains how language grows over time, and how and why language acquisition differs depending on the cultural and linguistic contexts.