Language, language development, language acquisition ....

1mpious · November 12, 2014, 11:31pm

Arminius, I think you yourself have something to learn about language.

Arminius · November 12, 2014, 11:37pm

Really? If so, then: why do you think so? And b.t.w.: why are you a crack dealer?

1mpious · November 13, 2014, 12:09am

Regarding your meme, I think it’s a fair point: gotta learn to speak before you can talk. But reading your work is like trying to understand a computer program. [EDIT: entirely] tedious; a real master of language knows better. And I think you can tell why I’m a crack dealer.

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Arminius · November 13, 2014, 12:27am

My next-to-last post refers to one of my other threads, namely this one: Will machines completely replace all human beings? It’s an interesting thread. Do you know it?

No, Impious, because I don’t know you.

1mpious · November 13, 2014, 12:59am

Check the edit. I usually only post in the off topic section where we keep it all short and sweet, not really my style to mill through sustained pieces.

Arminius · November 13, 2014, 1:33am

I guess you mean something like these examples:

Because I do not want to derail my own thread, I link to this post:
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viewtopic.php?f=2&t=179879&p=2506760#p2506760
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Arminius · February 9, 2015, 1:08am

No. Speech is very much more than that.

Prismatic567 · February 9, 2015, 4:07am

I agree with the above but
note the difference in views between Chomsky and George Lakoff & Johnson.

Chomsky’s theory assumed that the structure of language is “autonomous” — independent of meaning and communication. In 1963, George stumbled upon the first of hundreds of counterexamples.
georgelakoff.com/press/academic-biography/

In the topic of language we need to take into account the Broca’s area within the brain, its development and maintenance.

Like any other mental fields, the theory and philosophy of language should be presented within a systematic framework but not to the extent of being too pedantic and dogmatic.

Arminius · February 9, 2015, 11:50pm

I know Chomsky’s language theory very well, because I have studied linguistics as well. Philosophically, Chomsky is influenced by the German philosophers Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Wilhelm von Humboldt.

Arminius · February 13, 2015, 6:42pm

Do you know Daniel L. Everett?

The newest “alternative” to Chomsky?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEjJgvuH-RU[/youtube] [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii-ppBYsPKY[/youtube]
[tab][youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIbD7O79Goc[/youtube] [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QNZJSQLim0[/youtube][/tab]

Universal Grammar

Everett eventually concluded that Chomsky’s ideas about universal grammar, and the universality of recursion in particular, are falsified by Pirahã. His 2005 article in Current Anthropology, titled “Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Pirahã,”[3] has caused a controversy in the field of linguistics.[2][4] Though a supporter of Everett in the early part of Everett’s career, Chomsky refuses to further discuss Everett’s works and has called him a charlatan.[5] The June 2009 issue of the Journal of the Linguistic Society of America, Language, contains a nearly 100 page debate between Everett and some of his principal critics.

Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle

In November 2008, Everett’s book on the culture and language of the Pirahã people, and what it was like to live among them, was published in the United Kingdom by Profile Books and in the United States by Pantheon Books. Blackwell’s booksellers in the UK selected this as one of the best books of 2009 in the UK. National Public Radio selected it as one of the best books of 2009 in the US. Translations have appeared in German, French, and Korean and others are due to appear in 2010 in Thai, and Mandarin. Although the book has been discussed widely on the internet for the chapter that discusses his abandonment of religious faith, it is mainly about doing scientific field research and the discoveries that this has led to about the grammar and culture of the Pirahã people. Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes was runner-up for the 2008 Award for Adult Non-fiction from the Society of Midland Authors.[6]

Language: The Cultural Tool

This book develops an alternative to the view that language is innate. It argues that language is, like the bow and arrow, a tool to solve a common human problem, the need to communicate efficiently and effectively.[7][8]
Religious beliefs

Influenced by the Pirahã’s concept of truth, his belief in Christianity slowly diminished and he became an atheist. He says that he was having serious doubts by 1982, and had abandoned all faith by 1985. He would not tell anyone about his atheism until the late '90s;[9] when he finally did, his marriage ended in divorce and two of his three children broke off all contact. However, by 2008 full contact and relations have been restored with his children, who now seem to accept his viewpoint on theism.[10]

See also:
Pirahã language
Pirahã people

[size=80]References

Curriculum Vitae
Colapinto, John (April 16, 2007). “The Interpreter: Has a remote Amazonian tribe upended our understanding of language?”. The New Yorker. Retrieved December 30, 2014.
Daniel Everett, “Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Pirahã”, Current Anthropology, Volume 46, Number 4, August–October 2005, pp. 621-46.
Robin H. Ray, “Linguists doubt exception to universal grammar”, MIT News, April 23, 2007.
Folha de S.Paulo, 1 February 2009.
2008 Award of the Society of Midland Authors for adult nonfiction
daneverettbooks.com/
Bartlett, Tom (March 20, 2012). “Angry Words”. Chronicle of Higher Education.
Barkham, Patrick (10 November 2008). “The power of speech”. The Guardian (London).
Middleton, Liz Else, Lucy (2008-01-19). “Interview: Daniel Everett”. New Scientist.[/size]

See also:

Arminius · February 18, 2015, 8:48pm

No.

There is no native morality but a native system of values. Babies do not have morality; morality requires that the child can understand most of the language of those who have already morality. The language of those who have already morality leads to the understanding of morality, to a consciousness of morality, ethics, philosophy of law, … and so on. It is a question of a language-dependent education. A baby understands baby talk and merely a very, very little of the language of those who have already morality; so a baby is not able to understand enough of the language with morality, thus a baby is not able to understand morality.

A baby has values, is able to value; but a baby has no morality, is not able to judge morally.

Please, do not confuse morality with values, norms, rules, laws.

Arminius · June 28, 2015, 4:57pm

Do you think that language is based on an instinct?

A) No.
B) Yes.
C) I do not know.

If you voted “B”: What do you think about that kind of instinct?

B1) It is an interactional instinct.
B2) It is a mere language instinct.
B3) It is an interactional and a language instinct.
B4) It is neither an interactional nor a language instinct.

James_S_Saint · June 28, 2015, 6:28pm

Hmm… I would say more of (B) than of (A).
But I am not clear on what you mean by “interactional” vs “language”.
To me, a language is an “interactional” device.

Arminius · June 29, 2015, 1:06am

For example: A prenatal human interacts with the mother’s womb, a postnatal baby interacts with the mother, other familiar persons, and surrounding things; but a non-baby (an “ababy” [Mutcer?]) child interacts and speaks with many humans and many things, thus already uses a real language (e.g.: English).

Because of RM:AO, especially of SAM? So if you decided to vote “B” by considering RM:AO, especially SAM, then I would say your further vote should be “B1”.

James_S_Saint · June 29, 2015, 2:57am

I don’t see that RM:AO has anything to do with it. To me languages are a subset of the set of all interactions. It is instinctive to attempt communication, but most structured communication, “languages”, are taught. So instinct gets the effort started and society eventually structures the effort into a formal language.

So I guess that I would have to go with (B3) - both.

Arminius · July 17, 2015, 11:53pm

Without it human beings would not have come into the world:

=>#

Arminius · July 18, 2015, 12:37am

Why do humans have their language?

Language is a very much elaborated form of communication (information system) - there is an interdependence between language and communication (information system).
Language serves and supports thinking - there is an interdependence between language and thinking.
1 + 2) Language is a cultural tool - there is an interdependence between language and culture.

Without language humans would almost exclusively be like animals: (1) they would not speak but merely communicate like animals; (2) they could not have philosophy and other elaborated systems of thinking; (1 + 2) they would not have their own cultural tool, the typical human tool for culture.

For example:

If you are capable of using fire, then you are powerful and can defend yourself against all animals, sit at your bonfire and talk with other hunters about the hunt, about the past and the future, thus you have more leisure, more luxury; and this gives you and your culture a push in all directions, especially in spritual / intellectual directions, and then a feedback from all those directions.

Arminius · July 18, 2015, 10:16pm

Language has an innate and a non-innate feature. The capability of language learning is an innate feature, but if the environment of the said infant is without language, then this infant will not learn any language, and if an adult has never had any language experiences, then the language learning is almost impossible for this adult. So there is a critical point of time as a border for the capability of language learning. The capability of language learning gets lost (the older a human becomes the more the capability of language learning gets lost), generally and especially, if there is no language environment, no possibility of language exercises.

Arminius · July 19, 2015, 5:13pm

The workload and the speed of a little child’s language learning are not to top after the age of that little child who learns the language for the first time.

Arminius · August 7, 2015, 11:01am

Language is more than communication. The science of language is called “linguistics”. The following Illustration shows linguistics as the system of language within the “universe of the eight greatest systems” (physics, chemistry, economy, semiotics, linguistics, philosophy, mathematics):