Language does not necesssitate verbage. Interestingly hearing children of deaf parents will not learn English (or french etc) from watching TV. They require interaction with others in a present situational setting. The newest work is concluding that we possess from birth an existing brain system that requires input to be recognized as a languag. Pinker calls this mentalese. This system is hardwired just like other instincts like hunger or sexuality. But just like these other instincts it can be shaped and disciplined. Deaf children placed together have created their own unique language, without being instructed to do so, in a short time. Deaf children are quite capable to think and reason without learning any verbal or written language using this mentalese. Any type of complex activity requires some inner narrative to prepare for and execute activity. All higher animals possess something cognate to language.
Language
by onacruse 30 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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searcher
AlanF
This one?
Victor, the Wild Boy of Aveyron
L'Enfant Sauvage
Victor of Aveyron is perhaps the best-known feral child, made famous through Truffaut's film L'Enfant Sauvage. Victor is considered by many to be the first documented case of autism.
Found in the forest
Victor was first sighted wandering in the woods near Saint Sernin sur Rance, in southern France, at the end of the 18th century. He was captured but subsequently escaped, and wasn't retaken until January 1800 when he emerged from the woods. Aged about 12, he couldn't speak and bore a number of scars, suggesting he'd been in the wild for some time.
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onacruse
bikerchic, thanks for posting under my account, and making me look all smarty-poo!
Thanks for the links to those accounts about feral children...and what_Truth, your observation about autistic children---both excellent examples of the adaptability of the human organism, even if not evidence of how a human mind would develop in an environment totally totally devoid of cognitive feedback. Which leads to:
pete:
This system is hardwired just like other instincts like hunger or sexuality. But just like these other instincts it can be shaped and disciplined.
I see a distinction between these functions.
One set is purely biological: hunger, thirst, defecation--these are truly instinctive behaviors, even down at the bacterial level, requiring absolutely no training or conditioning whatsoever. Admittedly, how, and if, a nascent organism can survive without a "nurturing" physical environment does become somewhat problematic: every newborn is, after all, supplied with a food source by its progenitor(s). In that respect, AlanF is correct in correcting me: a baby supplied with access to these essential biological needs could conceivably live for a very long time, indeed.
But the other set of functions (communication and language); these seem to me to be fundamentally unrelated to these purely physical functions of bodily existence. At least two possibilities:
1) The need for communication is hard-wired (instinctive?)--If so, then human development of language (any language!) and the subsequent course of linguistic interactive behavior (for why else does one need language, except to interact?) is, in a very real way, predestined, and unalterable. The Creator must therefore take full and direct responsibility for the inevitable conduct of It's creatures.
2) The need for communication is not hard-wired, but, as you observe: "shaped and disciplined." Shaped and disciplined by who? And to what ends? And, if so shaped and disciplined, then can the human being so shaped and disciplined be held responsible for its development, as if it had created itself? Again, the Creator must take full responsibility for the consequences of It's own makings.
Thank you all for indulging me in this thought experiment.
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seattleniceguy
Hi Craig,
Sorry to keep referring to Pinker, but in his book he gives an account of a deaf man who was discovered as an adult with no language. He had passed the critical acquisition period for language, so he was never able to master language the way normal humans do.
However, he was clearly intelligent and had a need to communicate. He was shown signs for a few items one day, and after momentary confusion, the concept "clicked" with him, and he demanded to know the signs for everything around him. In time, he was able to relate stories from his past, including tales of how he had survived all this time. His expressive abilities remained limited, however.
I believe that the human need and desire to communicate is strong and innate. However, if no interactive language input is provided during a critical period, one's abilities to acquire it later will be severely limited.
SNG
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bebu
provide every physical need, but absolutely no direct contact whatsoever! No faces, no voices, no sounds, no other humans, no animals, no trees and leaves and flowers--just a pure and simple newborn, clean slate.
2 thoughts.
1) A famous experiment which deprived Reese's monkeys from contact with their mothers resulted in their failure to thrive, and subsequent death.
2) Even if such a child could thrive... what would there be to talk about? The ground??? As for that, if it came to discussing the ground (say, cement), perhaps they would become like the Eskimo, which have at least 20 words to differentiate the various types of snow... ??
bebu
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Qcmbr
I had afriend who went across to Romania to work in the orphanages and she said that many of teh kids had had minimal human contact for most of their short lives and they didn't show any emotions, didn't talk and didn't respond to other people. Language is only useful if theres someone to talk to. On the flip side I did study language formation at university and found that children are the prime creators of languages - for example they created creole which their parents could not understand , also new words and their meanings are actually introduced mainly by children with some artificial additions by adults creating buzzwords. The reason children can create language is that they have an inbuilt organising principle that is looking for order and leeds to common mistakes that children make (i.e. feets instead of feet) as they find a language rule and quite correctly apply it to everything. Children are also not averse to making words upif they cant say teh adult version (my sis used to to say fullahs instead of flowers) and these often get adopted by the adults!
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wednesday
had afriend who went across to Romania to work in the orphanages and she said that many of teh kids had had minimal human contact for most of their short lives and they didn't show any emotions, didn't talk and didn't respond to other people
I saw a program on adoption and the sometime perils of it and they referred to that. Many of those children had attachment disorder and were unmanageable. They would burn their adoptive parents home down or physically attack parents. it was a sad situation for people who only wanted to give love. The poor children, some things done during formative stages just can't be fixed.
weds
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mtbatoon
More interesting than the feral children is a case of a girl brought up in isolation by her parents. I haven't got the reference at the moment but I think her name was Ann and she was the result of an incestuous relationship (I believe her parents where brother and sister). She was fed and cared for but never spoken to. The result of this is she never developed any language or any communication skills.
A recent theory put forward is language developed as man, or more importantly woman, started walking upright. As the pelvis narrowed to accomplish bipedal locomotion the newborn child had to be born earlier in its development. This meant that the baby could not hang onto the mother as she foraged so had to be put down. To keep in contact with the baby, baby speak developed.
My thoughts are that the ability for language is natural but the development is nurtured. An interesting point put forward is the one by garybuss regarding limiting vocabulary to limit thought, 1984 and new speak.
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Narkissos
Why does this remind me of the famous experiment on performing fleas?
Remove one leg, say "jump!": the flea still jumps.
Remove two legs... etc.
Remove the last leg: the flea has become deaf.I think any individual approach to language is flawed inasmuch as language is a collective development of the human species, implying both physical (anatomical, neurological) and cultural (interaction with a given language corpus and community) characteristics. Every speaking individual partakes of, and contributes to language, but it can only be approached globally. Physical or cultural exceptions just mark the limits of the phenomenon, they cannot be used to trace a diachronical genealogy of it (e.g. first the innate, then the acquired, which only makes apparent sense when you focus on the wrong formal unit, i.e. the individual vs. the species). The phenomenon of language, just as sex, only makes sense collectively -- even though any individual relates to it in some way.
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peacefulpete
Exactly, well said. That is what I was trying to say when I commented about interaction in real time. It's as if the program is already present but needs to aquire the alphebet thu immersion/nurture. Recognised language then requires the anatomical/neurological to first be present, which means there is no such thing as a "clean slate" or as Pinker and others have called it"blank slate". The need to communicate is real in intelligent social beings, and group/kin selection has hard wired the machinery to enable even an infant to manifest this skill.