Piaget's research on the processes and products of cognitive and representational development in early childhood is employed to outline the bases of early language development. The processes of assimilation and accommodation, leading to horizontal decalage; empirical and reflective abstraction, resulting in schemas and schemes; as well as accommodative imitation and play, as sources of representation, are proposed to explain the infant's construction of cognitive and semantic base structures. Learning principles are added to this Piagetian account to explain the acquisition of a lexicon, transformations, and surface elements of specific languages. In this manner the developmental roots and the continuity of two basic cognitive and semantic structures, the"Object-and-Attribute-Frame" and the "Human-Action-Frame," are sketched out. These are reflected in language as copula sentences and full-verb sentences, respectively. A survey of factual research on the relationships between cognitive and language development and a discussion of some philosophical and linguistic implications of the proposed model conclude the study. (Author)