glantz@yippee.dec.com (26-Oct-1987 2000) (10/27/87)
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What is it in humans which makes language possible?
Much discussion about neural networks carries the implication that it
is a human brain researchers are hoping, ultimately, to simulate, and
that a successful simulation will exhibit human linguistic capability.
This is certainly an admirable and worthwhile, if ambitious, goal. But
current models don't seem to have any features which would distinguish
a human brain from, say, a cat's brain (I realize this is very early
days - no criticism intended). This will eventually have to be dealt
with.
One possible explanation for why humans have language and cats don't is
that there may be one or more physiological structures unique to the
human brain, other than its larger capacity, which make language
possible. This is the most obvious explanation that comes to mind, and
is perfectly reasonable, although we haven't yet identified which
structures these are, or what roles they might play.
But another possibility is that maybe the larger brain capacity is
sufficient, but that language is possible only after certain
``internal'' or ``symbolic'' structures are built on top of the
physiological base. This building occurs during infancy and early
childhood, and the resulting structures can be considered to be part of
the human brain, every bit as real as the physiologically observable
features.
We continue this line of conjecture by suggesting that:
o At some point in the past, the human species did not have language,
even though the brain was physiologically identical (or identical in
all essential respects) to today's human brain;
o It is the socialization process which, today, builds these structures
in the brain of the human infant, layer upon layer being added until a
layer at which language can exist is built, and then probably several
layers beyond that;
o That this linguistic-structure-formation process is a small component
of the entire human social system, the whole of which has evolved
through natural selection, just as any physical characteristic of any
species evolves.
The principal hypothesis, here, is that, given sufficient relative
brain capacity, and the appropriate socialization process, any
individual of another species (a porpoise, for example) could acquire
linguistic ability.
[Aside: It is known that the human brain (and that of other mammals, as
well) undergoes physiological changes during the period of infancy and
early childhood. It is possible that the initial acquisition of
linguistic skills can only occur effectively during this period, during
which time these physiological changes are significantly ``molded'' by
the socialization process, where certain ``symbolic'' structures
actually become ``wired in''. If this were the case, then the period
during which basic linguistic ability can be acquired would be limited
to this ``crystallization'' period, which is possibly much longer in
humans than in other mammals. We would then have to amend the
hypothesis to read: given sufficient brain capacity and a sufficiently
long ``crystallization period'' etc. It then remains (among other
things) to determine the exact nature of this ``crystallization'', and
incorporate a sufficiently long duration of this in a computer model.
Does anyone have any concrete information about human brain physiology
which would favor the completely ``physiological'' hypothesis of
linguistic capability over the ``sociological/anthropological''
explanation, or which would shed any other light on the question?
- mike glantz
Disclaimer: My employer is not aware that I have posted this message.merrill@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (10/27/87)
There is evidence that supports an argument the humans are "pre-equipped" to speak and to participate in language. In particular, the structure of the adult human velum is different from that found in other great apes, which, like human babies, can brethe while they swallow. Adult humans (in fact, human one-year-olds) can no longer do so. This modification is closely associated with the ability of the tongue to produce a number of the standard vowels. This argument is not air-tight, since children deaf from birth can (and do, if given the chance) acquire language, even though they do not speak. On the other hand, if an external structure has evolved to participate in linguistic performance, it is reasonable to argur that many internal structures have, too. John Merrill ARPA: merrill@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu UUCP: merrill@iuvax BITnet: merrill%iuvax.cs.indiana.edu@psuvax
djb@rayssd.RAY.COM (Douglas J. Bonn) (10/28/87)
In article <12400006@iuvax> merrill@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu writes: >There is evidence that supports an argument the humans are "pre-equipped" to >speak and to participate in language. In particular, the structure of the >adult human velum is different from that found in other great apes, which, >like human babies, can brethe while they swallow. Adult humans (in fact, >human one-year-olds) can no longer do so. This modification is closely >associated with the ability of the tongue to produce a number of the standard >vowels. This argument is not air-tight, since children deaf from birth can >(and do, if given the chance) acquire language, even though they do not speak. >[...] >John Merrill >ARPA: merrill@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu >UUCP: merrill@iuvax >BITnet: merrill%iuvax.cs.indiana.edu@psuvax It seems to me that we need to draw a distinction between the mental ability to comprehend and form independent thoughts (called phrases and sentences) from the vocal organs necessary for speech. I once had a cat that seemed smart enough to talk (but didn't often condescend to speak to me :-) though she didn't have the vocal chords for it, and there are mentally retarded people that don't seem to have the necessary intelligence to speak. While it is not exactly "speech", monkeys have been taught sign-language. They can ask for food, recognize people (even from photographs), ask to be let out of their cages, etc. I don't know enough about the study (but perhaps someone out there does), but the last I heard, the research with monkeys doing sign was curtailed. "Why can't my cat talk?" Perhaps if she could think as we understand thought, she would learn to meow in Morse Code or use a PC. -- Douglas J. Bonn, Esq. djb@rayssd.ray.com "As far as we can determine, our system has never had an undetected error..."
wcalvin@well.UUCP (William Calvin) (10/29/87)
> humans are 'pre-equipped" for language, e.g., vocal tract specializations
What's special about human language beyond primate language isn't the
mellifluorus quality of our sounds -- it is our ability to string together
individual sounds (phonemes, etc.) into a meaningful order. Human left
brains are specialized for handling sequencing problems like hand movements,
and that has probably made left brain a natural home for our word-order-ruled
language.
William H. Calvin
University of Washington NJ-15, Seattle WA 98195
wcalvin@well.uucp
P.S. I have an article on this topic coming out in the November 5 issue
of NATURE, entitled "The brain as a Darwin Machine".merrill@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (10/30/87)
/* Written 12:08 am Oct 29, 1987 by wcalvin@well in iuvax:comp.ai */ [...a small segment of one of my recent postings...] What's special about human language beyond primate language isn't the mellifluorus quality of our sounds -- it is our ability to string together individual sounds (phonemes, etc.) into a meaningful order. Human left brains are specialized for handling sequencing problems like hand movements, and that has probably made left brain a natural home for our word-order-ruled language. [...] /* End of text from iuvax:comp.ai */ I fear that you, like many readers, missed the point of my posting entirely. I was not arguing that the reason humans were special was any one thing, but rather that there were reasons to believe that humans were special. I didn't say that the position of the velum was the only, or, indeed, the primary adaptation of the human race to speak, but rather that it was *a critical* adaptation *to speak*. The writers who have pointed out that apes can learn to generate novel sentences in sign language have a good point. But those apes acquired only a small vocabulary (a few hundred signs.) Even a human with a few months experience with language has a vocabulary far in excess of what chimps acquire with many years of intensive coaching. Looked at in this light, the experiments with Lucy provide even stronger evidence for what I intended to argue in my previous posting: your cat can't talk because it isn't human. And there's something special about humans.
alan@pdn.UUCP (Alan Lovejoy) (10/31/87)
In article <4337@well.UUCP> wcalvin@well.UUCP (William Calvin) writes: >What's special about human language beyond primate language isn't the >mellifluorus quality of our sounds -- it is our ability to string together >individual sounds (phonemes, etc.) into a meaningful order. Human left >brains are specialized for handling sequencing problems like hand movements, >and that has probably made left brain a natural home for our word-order-ruled >language. Many, if not most, human languages encode syntactical structure in suffixes, prefixes, infixes or other root modifications and transformations. The more primitive the culture which uses the language, the more likely this is to be true. Syntax is a two-dimensional tree structure, not a one dimensional sequence. Sequence variations are more often used to signal thematic (theme-rheme) structure. The difference between "John Smith purchased a Ferrari" and "A Ferrari was purchased by John Smith" is a thematic difference; the syntactical relations are signaled more by the word-forms than the word positioning. The two different meanings of "Flying planes can be dangerous" have nothing at all to do either with word order or ambiguities in the constituent words. Also, the proposition that human hand movements are significantly more sophisticated than a racoon's seems specious to me. Do you have proof? Current attempts to explain human language have about as much chance of being correct as Newton had of discovering superstring theory. We don't know enough yet. Maybe next century. --alan@pdn P.S. "Purchased by was John Smith Ferrari a" can probably be correctly unscrambled by most native speakers of English. This also shows how much information is contained in the words themselves and not in the word order.
roberts@cognos.uucp (Robert Stanley) (11/01/87)
In article <11967@decwrl.DEC.COM> glantz@yippee.dec.com (26-Oct-1987 2000) writes: > [Aside: It is known that the human brain (and that of other mammals, as > well) undergoes physiological changes during the period of infancy and > early childhood. It is possible that the initial acquisition of > linguistic skills can only occur effectively during this period, during > which time these physiological changes are significantly ``molded'' by > the socialization process, where certain ``symbolic'' structures > actually become ``wired in''. If this were the case, then the period > during which basic linguistic ability can be acquired would be limited > to this ``crystallization'' period, which is possibly much longer in > humans than in other mammals. This little aside opens up an alternative line of study. There have been a number of well documented and researched cases of feralism in humans. In each case the human child had effectively been deprived of the necessary language- building stimuli during the period the author of the previos article refers to as the crystallization period. This has been discussed several times on the net in the last year, but from a different viewpoint. If it can be shown that feral children re-introduced into society *cannot* acquire natural language skills after they are a certain age, this would tend to reinfore the crystallization period theory. From memory, the last net discussion centered around whether feral children ever developed independent language skills or other viable communication systems, and it seems to me that the literature said they didn't. Assuming that rehabilitated feral children fail to acquire language abilities, some sort of practical threshold for the end of the crystallization phase could be determined. However, given the wide variance in individual physiology, coupled with the possibly unusual organic stresses of feral upbringing, this is unlikely to yield a very precise figure. Should this crystallization hypothesis prove true, what does this tell us about gorillas? And is AMSLAN, in which I understand at least one gorilla has achieved not only a considerable vocabulary but a remarkable proficiency at combining "symbols" to denote new concepts, a natural language? That is to say, does mastery of a sign language require the same brain functions as those required to speak a natural language? Robert_S -- Robert Stanley Cognos Incorporated S-mail: P.O. Box 9707 Voice: (613) 738-1440 (Research: there are 2!) 3755 Riverside Drive FAX: (613) 738-0002 Compuserve: 76174,3024 Ottawa, Ontario uucp: decvax!utzoo!dciem!nrcaer!cognos!roberts CANADA K1G 3Z4
goldberg@russell.UUCP (11/02/87)
In article <1699@pdn.UUCP> alan@pdn.UUCP (0000-Alan Lovejoy) writes: >Many, if not most, human languages encode syntactical structure in >suffixes, prefixes, infixes or other root modifications and >transformations. The more primitive the culture which uses the >language, the more likely this is to be true. Do you have any reason to believe this? >--alan@pdn -jeff goldberg -- Jeff Goldberg ARPA goldberg@russell.stanford.edu UUCP ...!ucbvax!russell.stanford.edu!goldberg
ruffwork@orstcs.UUCP (11/02/87)
In article <1697@cognos.UUCP> roberts@cognos.UUCP (Robert Stanley) writes: >In article <11967@decwrl.DEC.COM> glantz@yippee.dec.com (26-Oct-1987 2000) > writes: >> ...during which basic linguistic ability can be acquired would be limited >> to this ``crystallization'' period... >If it can be shown that feral children re-introduced into society *cannot* >acquire natural language skills after they are a certain age... It seems that Helen Keller would be a counter-example to the "crystallization period" theory, as she was a deaf and blind "feral" child but was "educated" LONG after the normally hypothesized "crystallization period". She could have just been an exception, but... --ritchey ruff Internet: ruffwork@cs.orst.edu UUCP: { hp-pcd | tektronix }!orstcs!ruffwork
alan@pdn.UUCP (Alan Lovejoy) (11/02/87)
In article <568@russell.STANFORD.EDU> goldberg@russell.UUCP (Jeffrey Goldberg) writes: >In article <1699@pdn.UUCP> alan@pdn.UUCP (0000-Alan Lovejoy) writes: > >>Many, if not most, human languages encode syntactical structure in >>suffixes, prefixes, infixes or other root modifications and >>transformations. The more primitive the culture which uses the >>language, the more likely this is to be true. > >Do you have any reason to believe this? Sure, having studied Linguistics extensively, and having seen the grammars of numerous third-world and/or American Indian languages, I feel quite justified in saying what I said. Your question implies doubt. Why do you doubt? If the examples I gave from English did not suffice to convince you, how about Russian? (I *know* that language). "Igor' lyubit svoyu s'istru" and "Svoyu s'istru lyubit Igor'" both mean the same thing (Igor loves his sister). Word order is irrelevant, except to signal whether Igor or his sister are the topic of conversation. This is not an isolated example, but is paradigmatic of Russian sentential sytax. --alan@pdn
murrayw@utai.UUCP (11/03/87)
In article <1699@pdn.UUCP> alan@pdn.UUCP (0000-Alan Lovejoy) writes: >Many, if not most, human languages encode syntactical structure in >suffixes, prefixes, infixes or other root modifications and >transformations. The more primitive the culture which uses the ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >language, the more likely this is to be true. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ RE: "Primitive culture" If such a term can even be applied to a culture then it is at best highly subjective. (e.g. Western Culture is very primitive but has a superficial gloss.) RE: "the more likely....." I think you'll have a hard time trying to show that language is evolving in a particular syntactic and morphological direction. Murray
srt@CS.UCLA.EDU (11/03/87)
In article <849@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> ruffwork@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU.UUCP (Ritchey Ruff) writes: >>If it can be shown that feral children re-introduced into society *cannot* >>acquire natural language skills after they are a certain age... > >It seems that Helen Keller would be a counter-example to the >"crystallization period" theory, as she was a deaf and blind "feral" >child but was "educated" LONG after the normally >hypothesized "crystallization period". She could have just been an >exception, but... Languages learned after a certain age (by feral children or simply as a second language by an adult) seem to be learned in a different manner than "native" languages. This is not to say that they can't be learned; just that they aren't learned with the proficiency of a native language. Scott R. Turner UCLA Computer Science "I wanna be sedated" Domain: srt@cs.ucla.edu UUCP: ...!{cepu,ihnp4,trwspp,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!srt
goldberg@russell.STANFORD.EDU (Jeffrey Goldberg) (11/03/87)
I am cross posting this to sci.lang and am directing follow-ups there. For the benifit (?) of the sci.lang readers I am quoting this entire message, with a few annotations. >In article goldberg@russell.UUCP (Jeffrey Goldberg) writes: >>In article <1699@pdn.UUCP> alan@pdn.UUCP (0000-Alan Lovejoy) writes: This is Jeff Goldberg >This is Alan Lovejoy <1705@pdn.UUCP> >>This is Jeff Goldberg <568@russell.STANFORD.EDU> >>>This is Alan Lovejoy <1699@pdn.UUCP> The story so far: A discussion of another but related topic lead Alan to write in article <1699@pdn.UUCP>: >>>Many, if not most, human languages encode syntactical structure in >>>suffixes, prefixes, infixes or other root modifications and >>>transformations. The more primitive the culture which uses the >>>language, the more likely this is to be true. I respond in <568@russell.STANFORD.EDU> with: >>Do you have any reason to believe this? Alan answers (<1705@pdn.UUCP>): >Sure, having studied Linguistics extensively, and having seen the >grammars of numerous third-world and/or American Indian languages, >I feel quite justified in saying what I said. >Your question implies doubt. Why do you doubt? If the examples I gave >from English did not suffice to convince you, how about Russian? (I >*know* that language). Yes, my answer implicates doubt. In fact, I had been tempted to originally write "Bullshit". But I will explain. I agree that a very large number of languages have much freer word order then English. The languages rely on affixation (case marking, agreement, incorporation, etc) to encode the kind of information that is incoded in word order in the more word order oriented languages. To draw statistical conclusions you need to factor a number of things out. If you are able to somehow determine a working definition of "primitive" you might find that a very large number of "primitive" people use free word order languages (Or loose constituent order languages). But when you go counting up languages you had better take into account historical relation and areal relation. This is, two languages may be of similar type because they derive (historically) from the same language. Two cultures may be of the same type because they derive from (historically) from the same culture. Two languages may be similar when the people who speak them have had long term contact. So, if you want to add all the austronesian languages up (I think it is the largest language family in terms of number of languages) I will count that as one. The same, I would hold for the languages of Papua/New Guina. Once we eliminate these 2000 or so languages. We are left with anecdotes and nothing that is statistically significant. And anecdotes can be dangerous. It is very to look at a strange language and notice all kinds of things about it that one ignores in ones own language. For example, Benjamin L. Whorf had noticed in one of the languages he studied that the marker for the future tense was related to forms for "intention" and "desire". He concluded from this that these people had a notion of time that was nearly beyond the understanding of us Standard Average European speakers. He never seemed to pay much attention to the English future marker "will". >"Igor' lyubit svoyu s'istru" and "Svoyu s'istru lyubit Igor'" both mean the >same thing (Igor loves his sister). Word order is irrelevant, except >to signal whether Igor or his sister are the topic of conversation. >This is not an isolated example, but is paradigmatic of Russian >sentential sytax. But if you want anacdotes, fine. Why is French so similar in word order and topicalization to Chichewa. Or Irish to Biblical Hebrew. Or Enlish (in word order) to Chinese. While English and Russian differ (your example). Are the Siamese a primitive culture, what about the Lao? Are (East) Indian cultures primitive? Has it always been that way? Depending on what your definition of "primitive" is we could each through out example and counter example. The "winner" would be the one who knew about the most languages. I don't want to get into that kind of fight. It would prove nothing except who was willing to spend more time in the library. They view you hald may be seductive because under some possible definitions there are just a handful of non-primitive cultures. Most of these are from one language family. I will take your claim seriously if you do the following: (1) Devise a sampling method that factors out things that should be factored out. (I linguist named Matthew Dryer has done some excellent work on this problem, and has consturcted a method that I would certainly trust.) (2) Provide a definition of "primitive" which would yeild the same result when applied by a number of anthropologists. (That is, your definition must be explicit enough so that an arbitrary anthropologist could determine what what "primitive".) (3) Provide a definition of what ever grammatical property you wish to test for which would yeild the same result when applied by a number of linguists. (That is, your definition must be explicit enough so that an arbitrary linguist could tell whether it is "free word order" (or whatever).) (4) Apply standard statistical techniques to determine significance. Until you move to do something like that your claim is like claiming: "People with big feet like tometos". And basing this on the fact that you have met a couple families with bigger feet then yours who served spaghetti with tomato sause and one even put tomatoes in the salad. This will probably be my last posting on this subject. >--alan@pdn -- Jeff Goldberg ARPA goldberg@russell.stanford.edu UUCP ...!ucbvax!russell.stanford.edu!goldberg
ptero%zwicky@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu.UUCP (11/03/87)
In article <849@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> ruffwork@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU.UUCP (Ritchey Ruff) writes: >In article <1697@cognos.UUCP> roberts@cognos.UUCP (Robert Stanley) writes: >>In article <11967@decwrl.DEC.COM> glantz@yippee.dec.com (26-Oct-1987 2000) >> writes: >>> ...during which basic linguistic ability can be acquired would be limited >>> to this ``crystallization'' period... >>If it can be shown that feral children re-introduced into society *cannot* >>acquire natural language skills after they are a certain age... > >It seems that Helen Keller would be a counter-example to the >"crystallization period" theory, as she was a deaf and blind "feral" >child but was "educated" LONG after the normally >hypothesized "crystallization period". She could have just been an >exception, but... > >--ritchey ruff Helen Keller was *not* a feral child, nor did she learn langauge after the crystallization period. Feral children are children who have been deprived of all human contact; Helen Keller was by most accounts much loved. The crystallization period for human language has been pretty well determined as ending at puberty. The data for this comes primarily not from children abandoned in the wild, but from children abused and deprived by human beings. The most famous of these was Genie, who was found just after puberty (because, as it turned out, her mother was willing to let her father keep her as a pet, but drew the line at having her killed, which was what her father intended to do when she became adult). Most of the linguists who worked with Genie to this day have difficulty lecturing about it without tears. I have heard people who never knew her claim that she was never fully human; the sad truth is that Genie was obviously an intelligent, loving human to all those who knew her, capable of charming strangers in the street, and with a love for learning and language. But she never learned the grammar of English, even though she gained an enormous vocabulary, and she never was capable of learning to behave like everyone else. This is in comparison to children found as late as 10 who learned English if anything faster than babies, and frequently caught up with their peers in a few years. Ameslan, by the way, is accepted in the linguistic world as a human language. Babies brought up in Ameslan-speaking households learn Ameslan with the same patterns as they would have learning English. There is some debate about its using some different neurological centers, but there is a great deal of overlap. Elizabeth Zwicky (zwicky@ohio-state.arpa, ...cbosgd!osu-cis!tut!zwicky)
srt@CS.UCLA.EDU (11/04/87)
In article <938@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> zwicky@ptero.cis.ohio-state.edu (Elizabeth D. Zwicky) writes: >...The data for this comes primarily >not from children abandoned in the wild, but from children abused and >deprived by human beings. The most famous of these was Genie... You should be careful drawing conclusions about normal human linguistic behavior from examples like Genie and aphasiacs. Genie is an interesting case, but her language isolation to puberty is probably the least of her problems. She's a psychological mess due to her upbringing, and it isn't clear whether her problems with learning manners (say) has to do with her language isolation or her other mental problems. Hypotheses drawn from degenerate cases like Genie need to be carefully tested in the normal adult population before they can be given any serious consideration. Scott R. Turner UCLA Computer Science "Because no one else wanted me." Domain: srt@cs.ucla.edu UUCP: ...!{cepu,ihnp4,trwspp,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!srt
justin@inmet.UUCP (11/04/87)
/* Written 4:03 pm Oct 31, 1987 by roberts@cognos.UUCP in inmet:comp.ai */ Should this crystallization hypothesis prove true, what does this tell us about gorillas? And is AMSLAN, in which I understand at least one gorilla has achieved not only a considerable vocabulary but a remarkable proficiency at combining "symbols" to denote new concepts, a natural language? That is to say, does mastery of a sign language require the same brain functions as those required to speak a natural language? /* End of text from inmet:comp.ai */ As I understand it, AMSLAN is, in fact, a proper natural language. The rub is that the gorillas learning it have only learned it to a point. AMSLAN has its own particular syntax, and that seems to be the sticking point. While the gorillas seem perfectly able to learn the concepts, and is able to stick them together, they don't seem to be able to understand sophisticated *syntax* (beyond two-word combinations). Just what this implies about cognition, I'm not sure. -- Justin du Coeur
alan@pdn.UUCP (11/04/87)
In article <1697@cognos.UUCP> roberts@cognos.UUCP (Robert Stanley) writes:
/In article <11967@decwrl.DEC.COM> glantz@yippee.dec.com (26-Oct-1987 2000)
/If it can be shown that feral children re-introduced into society *cannot*
/acquire natural language skills after they are a certain age, this would tend
/to reinfore the crystallization period theory. From memory, the last net
If the Crystallization Theory were true, how would natural language have
evolved at all?
--alan@pdnsmoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar) (11/04/87)
"If a lion could talk, we could not understand him." Ludwig Wittgenstein PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS Volume II, Section xi (p. 223e in the Basil Blackwell paperback)
glantz@yippee.dec.com (04-Nov-1987 0950) (11/04/87)
ritchey ruff writes: > It seems that Helen Keller would be a counter-example to the > "crystallization period" theory, as she was a deaf and blind "feral" > child but was "educated" LONG after the normally hypothesized > "crystallization period". Good point. If true, this is reasonably strong evidence refuting the hypothesis.
laurie@quintus.UUCP (Laurie Cavanaugh) (11/04/87)
In article <12085@decwrl.DEC.COM>, glantz@yippee.dec.com (04-Nov-1987 0950) writes: [Re: the Helen Keller hypothesis] > Good point. If true, this is reasonably strong evidence refuting > the hypothesis. Unfortunately, this is not true. I read a biography of Helen Keller several years ago in which it was made clear that Ms. Keller was not blind and deaf from birth. Rather, at the age of about two a disease (I don't recall if this was congenital or acquired) destroyed her ability to see and hear. Thus, this is not a reliable example of a human learning speech without undergoing this 'crystallization period'. I would be interested in a supported case of blindness and/or deafness from birth and its effects on the acquisition of language. Laurie Cavanaugh
RLWALD@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Robert Wald) (11/05/87)
In article <849@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU>, ruffwork@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU (Ritchey Ruff) writes: >In article <1697@cognos.UUCP> roberts@cognos.UUCP (Robert Stanley) writes: >>In article <11967@decwrl.DEC.COM> glantz@yippee.dec.com (26-Oct-1987 2000) >>> ...during which basic linguistic ability can be acquired would be limited >>> to this ``crystallization'' period... >It seems that Helen Keller would be a counter-example to the >"crystallization period" theory, as she was a deaf and blind "feral" >child but was "educated" LONG after the normally >hypothesized "crystallization period". She could have just been an >exception, but... Helen Keller went deaf and blind after she was one or two years old and so was exposed to enough stimulus to make it possible for her to later learn to talk/communicate. Or at least thats how the objection was answered when it came up in a class sometime. -Rob Wald Bitnet: RLWALD@PUCC.BITNET Uucp: {ihnp4|allegra}!psuvax1!PUCC.BITNET!RLWALD Arpa: RLWALD@PUCC.Princeton.Edu "Why are they all trying to kill me?" "They don't realize that you're already dead." -The Prisoner
zwicky@dormouse.cis.ohio-state.edu (Elizabeth D. Zwicky) (11/05/87)
In article <8986@shemp.UCLA.EDU> srt@CS.UCLA.EDU (Scott Turner) writes: Hypotheses drawn from >degenerate cases like Genie need to be carefully tested in the normal adult >population before they can be given any serious consideration. > > Scott R. Turner Give me a break here. You CANNOT test hypotheses about whether or not there is a crystallization period after which language cannot be learned without dealing with degenerate cases. The case of someone who has been deprived of all language contact for n years, starting at birth, whether n is 2, 5, or 12, will always be a degenerate case. Certainly, Genie is not conclusive evidence, and such cases are (thank God!) rare, and so the evidence is not conclusive. However, in all known cases, children deprived of language contact cannstill learn languages normally if they start before puberty. The idea of a crystallization period is supported by the data about second language learning in normal humans, but the question I was answering was about learning of *first* languages. Elizabeth Zwicky
srt@CS.UCLA.EDU (11/06/87)
In article <1125@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> zwicky@dormouse.cis.ohio-state.edu (Elizabeth D. Zwicky) writes: >In article <8986@shemp.UCLA.EDU> srt@CS.UCLA.EDU (Scott Turner) writes: >> Hypotheses drawn from >>degenerate cases like Genie need to be carefully tested in the normal adult >>population before they can be given any serious consideration. > >Give me a break here. Take two, they're cheap. > ...You CANNOT test hypotheses about whether or not >there is a crystallization period after which language cannot be learned >without dealing with degenerate cases. Huh? Studies about second language learning and use clearly bear on this question. I don't consider adults who can learn a second language degenerate. (Well, no more degenerate than the average adult :-). I agree with your points, by the way. I'm just cautioning against building models based on people like Genie without having separate, confirming evidence that the model is reasonable for normal people. Scott R. Turner UCLA Computer Science "Delving into mockery science" Domain: srt@cs.ucla.edu UUCP: ...!{cepu,ihnp4,trwspp,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!srt
hugh@edhnic.UUCP (11/20/87)
Who is doing what right now with teaching gorillas, chimps, dolphins or other animals to communicate? Especially how is Koko the gorilla doing these days? I don't think I would consider AMSLAN any more "natural" than Esperanto, but it certainly counts as a real, expressive language. ...!utzoo!genat!clunk!bvax!edhnic!hugh