Abstract.
The intellectual conception of language development in children is the best known aspect of the work of Stern.
Stern distinguishes 3 roots of language: expressive trend, social and "intentional". While the first two underlie also support the foundations of speaking viewed on the animals, the third one is specifically of humankind.
In substance, such intentional acts are already acts of thought. Some of the modern cognitive psychologists emphasize the logical factor in the child's speech. Although Stern considers their emphasis on that factor excessive, he, nevertheless, fully endorses their orientation. He indicates a precise moment in speech development when "intentionality penetrates and supplies speech with its specifically human characteristics".
The trouble is that Stern regards intentionality, a trait of advanced speech that properly calls for a genetic explanation, as one of the roots of speech development, a driving force, an innate tendency, almost an urge, at any rate something primordial, on a par genetically with the expressive and the communicative tendencies which indeed are found at the very beginnings of speech. He substitutes an intellectualistic explanation for the genetic one.
This method of "explaining" a thing by the very thing that needs explaining is the basic flaw of all intellectualistic theories. Stern answers the question of why and how speech acquires meaning by saying: from the intentional tendency, i.e., the tendency toward meaning.
When small children are playing, they often keep up a running commentary on what is happening: “And now the train’s going round the tower, and it’s banging in to the tower, and – oh no – the tower’s toppling down…”. Vygotsky calls this an external monologue. As time goes on, the external monologue is internalized as thought.
The speech structures mastered by children therefore become the basic structures of their thinking.
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