In the first part of the paper the idea of the cognitive network is developed. The network consists of concepts linked together by relationships which are themselves concepts. Concepts are learned according to simple rules, and the network grows as new concepts are learned. Part II considers the growth and structure of language. The growth of language within the network follows the same rules as the growth of perceptual ability. Labels are attached to some concepts for syntactic transformations to others. Perceptual syntactic relations tend to have syntactic programs as their expression in language. In Part III some problems of bilingualism are considered. The simultaneous growth of two languages presents special problems to an infant. Instead of linking labels and syntactic programs directly to concepts in the network, the infant's linkages must be conditional on extraneous factors. The bilingual infant should have early difficulty with language, but should eventually derive a richer concept structure than a monolingual. Second language learning is seen as a process of breaking down structures that have stabilized in order to replace them with new and more complex structures. Linguistic relativity is real, but occurs primarily in the more abstract realms of thought, not at the perceptual levels. (Author/CLK)