The relationships between a child's perceptual space and the acquisition of language are discussed in light of the work of Clark, Fillmore, and Chafe. Early language is analyzed as a semantic structure where linguistic ties are established between semantic features and inherent and relational perceptual features. Of these, it is the relational features which provide the basis for identification of semantic role, which in turn provides the substructure for the construction of a syntactic system. (AA)