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the verbs 'see' and 'look'

July 23, 2009 by Anonymous, 18 weeks 3 days ago
Comment: 38254

This is consistent with the more general meanings of the words 'see' and 'look', which are more to do with perception than with vision specifically. (I.e., I saw a friend yesterday, do you see what I mean?, Can I see that thing you're holding?, Can I look at the pebble? Look what I found! It looks like I won't have time to finish sanding that bit. If you don't believe me how cold this thing is, touch it and you'll see for yourself.) In many if not most daily uses of these words, the specific sense of vision is not really the point. I.e., if I imagine myself interacting with a blind child (or even adult), _I_ would use the words 'see' and 'look' pretty much exactly how the children in the example use them, and I would expect that the parents and family of those kids would likely use them similarly - "Look at this apple (handing apple to toddler) - see how big and round it is? What a big apple....", etc.

I wonder what would happen if you actually discussed the words with a 3-year old and asked them what things they could mean. I suspect by that age they would understand that there's such a thing as vision, and might even know that word 'see' can have a specific meaning relating to vision.

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