The Importance of Space in Language

A lot of our language evolved and developed with terminology that probably wouldn't have evolved if we didn't have a concept of proprioception. The little ones, they just don't represent the final spatial state of next to or behind or in front of or on top of. And then as it turns out, those concepts are a little hard for them to understand as well. We've given them sort of non-linguistic tasks and they do less well than children whose languages have those spatial concepts.