Nativist theories of language insist that an infant must possess some abstr
act concepts about the structure of language or, at the very least, some wo
rd-learning biases to be able to acquire the sorts of skills and knowledge
displayed by competent language-speakers. A direct consequence of Cartesian
epistemology, nativism limits the role of linguistic anthropology to valid
ating its claim that children typically acquire language in essentially the
same manner, regardless of the culture in which they are raised. It seeks
to confine linguistic anthropology to the study of the socialization proces
ses whereby children use their "innate" linguistic knowledge to become acce
pted members of their community. Linguistic anthropologists, in contrast, s
ee field studies as a way of discovering what children in different societi
es actually learn about a language when they learn how to speak. In this no
n-Cartesian approach, children are seen as learning how to do different kin
ds of things with words-how to engage in the culturally significant actions
that make up their community's "form of life." The case of proper names in
Anglo-American and Navaho culture is here examined as an illustration of t
he significance of this epistemological shift.