"How does a child come to be able to relate his own experience to the formal means of communicating about that experience in the language to which he is exposed?" The author maintains that the innate predispositions that underlie the development of the cognitive ability to organize and structure experience also underlie the acquisition of the structural systems for communicating about this experience, chief among which is language. Applying Piaget's and other psychologists' ideas concerning conceptual schemata and cognitive development, and Halliday's (1970) method for analyzing meaning in language to the taped utterances of seven children, the author notes patterns in the developing use of clause types by the children. The author suggests, having cited parallels between cognitive development and language development, that what is required is a detailed investigation of the strategies that children employ in their attempts to comprehend and convey the meaning intentions that are coded in speech. (VM)