The conditions whereby a concept might be learned on the basis of a language mediation process prior to the inductive learning of subordinate concepts are sketched. The view is expressed that grammar treatments which are apt to primary education should be defined on the basis of a pedagogy's needs for linguistic characterizations of concepts to be learned during primary education. Grammar is viewed as appropriate to the extent that it aids the child to decode linguistic characterizations to extralinguistic meaning. The bulk of the paper is taken up with a discussion of the conditions under which a child might be expected to learn a new concept strictly on the basis of past experience and language mediation effects. (Author/RB)