Academic forgetfulness strikes again.

"In fact, even a cursory observation of the way children acquire language will confirm that concepts such as bird" or "cat" or "dog" have something natural about them. Children ask almost all imaginable (and many unimaginable) questions. But have you ever heard a child saying, "Mommy, is this a cat or dog?" Rack your brains and rummage through your memories as hard as you can, you are unlikely to recall a child asking, "How can I tell if this is a bird or a rose?" While children always need to be taught the labels for such concepts in the particular language of their society, they don't need to be told how to distinguish between the concepts themselves. It is quite enough for a toddler to see a few pictures of a cat in a picture book, and the next time she sees a cat, even if it's ginger rather than tabby, even if it has longer hair, a shorter tail, only one eye, and a hind leg missing, she will still recognize it as a cat rather than a dog or bird or rose. Children's instinctive grasp of such concepts shows that human brains are innately equipped with powerful pattern-recognition algorithms, which sort similar objects into groups. So concepts such as "cat" or "bird" must somehow correspond to this inborn aptitude to categorize the world."

I was really enjoying Through The Language Glass until I came to this section. I'm still enjoying it, but this part left a bad enough taste in my mouth I had to set the book aside for the rest of the night - largely because, yes, some children have in fact asked that question and needed to consciously work on their grasp of concepts and language to determine the differences between dogs and cats. Certain types of thinking can't always be taken for granted, or even assumed to be universal, and it bothered me to read the author's assertion otherwise.

Okay, on some level I understand that taking autistics into account while examining global language patterns isn't necessarily going to be that relevant in regards to the greater discussion. On another level, I recognize that when you're writing a general treatise you need to stick to the largest, most measurable aspects of the subject itself in order to get an idea of what needs to be researched to begin with. And for all that, if you're going to be writing about how language and thought are intrinsically tied to each other, excluding autistics from the research and discussion is leaving out a whole lot of really good data that would serve you tremendously if you'd only pay attention.