[...] language acquisition, or rather language development, to revert to the earlier term – ʻacquisitionʼ is a rather misleading metaphor, suggesting that language is some sort of property to be owned – needs to be seen as the mastery of linguistic functions. Learning one’s mother tongue is learning the uses of language, and the meanings, or rather the meaning potential, associated with them. The structures, the words and the sounds are the realization of this meaning potential. Learning language is learning how to mean.
- Halliday (1973), a pag.24