[Development of communicative competence in infancy].

An introductory review about developmental psychological issues of the process of infant language acquisition in the first year of life is presented with a short discussion on its relation with child psychopathology. Instead of a discontinuity a continuity seems to exist from the infant initial communicative signals, such as gesture, facial expression and preverbal vocalizations, to the best known milestones of the infant language development. The particular aspects concerning the origin of a symbolic code--the origin of language--are briefly presented.