Could someone please direct me to writings about the connection between language and thought?
Do we translate our thoughts into language or is language requisite for complex thought? Is there any way to know?
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Book suggestion: S.I. HAYAKAWA’S LANGUAGE IN THOUGHT AND ACTION. The book’s premise is that the introduction of new technology shapes a culture’s thought models and hence a culture’s language.
I don’t think we translate thought into language. Rather, we think using signs. But not exclusively. More primitively, we “think†using images. We normally experience this in dreams and in hypnogogic state between waking and sleeping, and in reverie or daydreams. This kind of cognition which is sometimes called imagination can be highly creative and complex.
Mathematician and philosopher, Rene Descartes said his most creative periods came when lying in bed upon awakening. He claimed to have invented analytic geometry while in bed idly watching a fly flying around the room. Observing the fly, in his half-awake state, he realized that he could plot the fly’s position anywhere in the room using only two. The pictorial basis of analytic geometry appears to be Descartes’ imaging cognition in the hypnogogic state.
these look very good (although i haven’t read them):
‘thought and language - revised edition’ - vygotsky, ed. kozulin
‘language, thought and consciousness: an essay in philosophical psychology’ - carruthers
‘language and thought: a rational enquiry into their nature and relationship’ - gethin (although this might stray into religion-related topics)
‘politics, language and thought: the somali experience’ - laitin
the best source i know of for answering that question is reading about ‘feral children’, people who never acquired language and what their thinking abilities are. feralchildren.com
why get mired in the conflictinmg opinions of many academic speculationists when you cxan go directly to the evidence?
Ah, the good old ‘these feral children didn’t learn language, thus the ability to learn language must be inherent’ argument. Forgive me for saying so, but that’s the epitome of academic speculation…
No, I was just saying that if you want to know the relation between language and thought, especially how much thought is dependent on language acquisition, then read about the thinking abilities of people who hadnt thus far acquired language. Seems perfeclty reasonable to me.
I dont really understand your objection because i dont see how one could argue that some people not having acquired language implies that language is a natural trait, but I know its not what I was trying to say. (But that does raise the point that, if language ability IS inherent, then even reading about people who never acquired language doesnt fully tell you how much thought is dependent on language to the extent that the question is about how much inherent support for language determines thought ability.)
But, in the absence of a language for these people to explain their thoughts, all we have as evidence of them thinking is our own speculation.
My point being that we cannot describe languageless thought in language.
My point is very simple. The existence of feral children is often used as evidence for the theory that the ability to learn language is inherent, as in Noam Chomsky’s theory of linguistics. Given the evidence, some people who have not learnt language, and the two possible conclusions - that learning language is an inherent ability or that it isn’t an inherent ability, it is less of a leap to claim that it isn’t an inherent ability. Indeed, unless one were arguing from the conclusion (that the ability is inherent) then one would literally NEVER come to this conclusion given the evidence of feral children.
But of course, the vast majority of academic argument (scientific or otherwise) is led by desired conclusions rather than strict deductive argument. As such, reading about feral children teaches us literally nothing about the relationship between language and thought, but teaches us a lot about how even intelligent people use ridiculous arguments to try to support their conclusions.
As I said, by my logic reading about the languageless tells us nothing about language.
Science 17 September 2004:
Vol. 305. no. 5691, pp. 1779 - 1782
DOI: 10.1126/science.1100199
Reports
Children Creating Core Properties of Language: Evidence from an Emerging Sign Language in Nicaragua
Ann Senghas,1* Sotaro Kita,2 Asli Özyürek3,4,5
A new sign language has been created by deaf Nicaraguans over the past 25 years, providing an opportunity to observe the inception of universal hallmarks of language. We found that in their initial creation of the language, children analyzed complex events into basic elements and sequenced these elements into hierarchically structured expressions according to principles not observed in gestures accompanying speech in the surrounding language. Successive cohorts of learners extended this procedure, transforming Nicaraguan signing from its early gestural form into a linguistic system. We propose that this early segmentation and recombination reflect mechanisms with which children learn, and thereby perpetuate, language. Thus, children naturally possess learning abilities capable of giving language its fundamental structure.
1 Department of Psychology, Barnard College of Columbia University, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027, USA.
2 Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, 8 Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1TN, UK.
3 F. C. Donders Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Nijmegen University, Adelbertusplein 1, 6525 EK Nijmegen, Netherlands.
4 Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Wundtlaan 1, 6525 XD Nijmegen, Netherlands.
5 Department of Psychology, Koç University, Rumeli Feneri Yolu, 34450, Sariyer, Istanbul, Turkey.
As I said - the argument only follows if one presumes the desired conclusion is true. Without this assumption, the argument is bunk. Language has NO inherent structure.
The point of the paper is that they created a hierarchical system to the language, which has no reason to be there if what you say is true. Here is the complete article:
Science 17 September 2004:
Vol. 305. no. 5691, pp. 1779 - 1782
DOI: 10.1126/science.1100199
Prev | Table of Contents | Next
Reports
Children Creating Core Properties of Language: Evidence from an Emerging Sign Language in Nicaragua
Ann Senghas,1* Sotaro Kita,2 Asli Özyürek3,4,5
A new sign language has been created by deaf Nicaraguans over the past 25 years, providing an opportunity to observe the inception of universal hallmarks of language. We found that in their initial creation of the language, children analyzed complex events into basic elements and sequenced these elements into hierarchically structured expressions according to principles not observed in gestures accompanying speech in the surrounding language. Successive cohorts of learners extended this procedure, transforming Nicaraguan signing from its early gestural form into a linguistic system. We propose that this early segmentation and recombination reflect mechanisms with which children learn, and thereby perpetuate, language. Thus, children naturally possess learning abilities capable of giving language its fundamental structure.
1 Department of Psychology, Barnard College of Columbia University, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027, USA.
2 Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, 8 Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1TN, UK.
3 F. C. Donders Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Nijmegen University, Adelbertusplein 1, 6525 EK Nijmegen, Netherlands.
4 Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Wundtlaan 1, 6525 XD Nijmegen, Netherlands.
5 Department of Psychology, Koç University, Rumeli Feneri Yolu, 34450, Sariyer, Istanbul, Turkey.
- To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: annie@alum.mit.edu
Certain properties of language are so central to the way languages operate, and so widely observed, that Hockett termed them “design features” of language (1). This study asks whether these properties can arise naturally as a product of language-learning mechanisms, even when they are not available in the surrounding language environment. We focus here on two particular properties of language: discreteness and combinatorial patterning. Every language consists of a finite set of recombinable parts. These basic elements are perceived categorically, not continuously, and are organized in a principled, hierarchical fashion. For example, we have discrete sounds that are combined to form words, that are combined to form phrases, and then sentences, and so on. Even those aspects of the world that are experienced as continuous and holistic are represented with language that is discrete and combinatorial. Together, these properties make it possible to generate an infinite number of expressions with a finite system. It is generally agreed that they are universal hallmarks of language, although their origin is the subject of continued controversy (2–7).
Humans are capable of representations that lack these properties. For example, nonlinguistic representations such as maps and paintings derive their structure iconically, from their referent. That is, patterns in the representation correspond, part for part, to patterns in the thing represented. In this way, half a city map represents half a city. Unlike language, such nonlinguistic representations are typically analog and holistic.
The present study documents the emergence of discreteness and combinatorial patterning in a new language. Over the past 25 years, a sign language has arisen within a community of deaf Nicaraguans who lacked exposure to a developed language. This situation enables us to discover how fundamental language properties emerge as the nonlinguistic becomes linguistic.
Before the 1970s, deaf Nicaraguan children and adults had little contact with each other. Societal attitudes kept most deaf individuals at home, and the few schools and clinics available served small numbers of children. Interviews with former students reveal little evidence of contact with classmates outside school, or after graduation (8, 9). In this context, no sign language emerged, as evidenced by the lack of language in today’s adults over the age of 45.
In such situations, deaf people will often develop “home signs”: communication systems built up out of common gestures, used with family members. Although not full languages, home signs exhibit some of the rudiments of language (10, 11). The home sign systems developed by Nicaraguans appear to have varied widely from one deaf person to another in form and complexity (12).
This situation changed abruptly with the opening of an expanded elementary school for special education in 1977, followed by a vocational school in 1981, both in Managua. Deaf enrollment in the programs initially comprised about 50 students, growing to more than 200 by 1981 and increasing gradually throughout the 1980s. For the first time, students continued their contact outside school hours, and by the mid-1980s deaf adolescents were meeting regularly on the weekends (8). Although instruction in school was conducted in Spanish (with minimal success), these first children began to develop a new, gestural system for communicating with each other. The gestures soon expanded to form an early sign language (13, 14). Through continued use, both in and out of school, the growing language has been passed down and relearned naturally every year since, as each new wave of children entered the community (15).
Today there are about 800 deaf signers of Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL), ranging from 4 to 45 years of age. Previous research on NSL has found that changes in its grammar first appear among preadolescent signers, soon spreading to subsequent, younger learners, but not to adults (16). This pattern of transmission, when combined with the rapid and recent expansion of NSL, has created an unusual language community in which the most fluent signers are the youngest, most recent learners. Consequently, much of the history of the language can be surveyed by performing a series of observations, progressing from the older signers, who retain much of NSL’s early nature, to younger, more recent learners, who produce the language in its expanded, most developed form.
Following this logic, the present study compares the signed expressions of 30 deaf Nicaraguans, grouped into cohorts according to the year that they were first exposed to NSL: 10 from a first cohort (before 1984), 10 from a second cohort (1984 to 1993), and 10 from a third cohort (after 1993). All of the deaf participants have been signing NSL since the age of 6 or younger. Their signed expressions are compared to the gestures produced by 10 hearing Nicaraguan Spanish speakers while speaking Spanish (17).
In particular, we examine the gestures and signs in expressions that describe complex motion events, such as rolling down a hill or climbing up a wall. We chose descriptions of motion for two reasons. First, previous research has found that when speakers describe motion events, they often produce co-speech gestures that iconically represent the movement (18, 19). Such gestures (unlike speech) are fully available to deaf observers, likely providing raw materials to shape into a sign language. Second, the description of motion offers a promising domain for detecting the introduction of segmented, linear, and hierarchical organization of information into a communication system. Motion events include a manner of movement (such as rolling) and a path of movement (such as descending). These characteristics of motion are simultaneous aspects of a single event and are experienced holistically. The most direct way to iconically represent such an event would be to represent manner and path simultaneously. Languages, in contrast, typically encode manner and path in separate elements, combined according to the rules of the particular language (20). For example, English produces one word to express manner (rolling) and another to express path (down), and assembles them into the sequence “rolling down.” Signing that dissects motion events into separate manner and path elements, and assembles them into a sequence, would exhibit the segmentation and linearization typical of developed languages and unlike the experience of motion itself.
To collect samples of signing and gesturing that describe motion events, we presented participants with an animated cartoon and videotaped them telling its story to a peer. Deaf subjects signed their narratives. Hearing subjects spoke Spanish, and only their co-speech gestures were analyzed. Those expressions that included both manner and path information were coded with respect to how the information was integrated: (i) simultaneously, as a single hand movement, and/or (ii) sequentially, articulated separately within a string of simple manner-only and path-only elements (Fig. 1). Note that a single multigesture expression can include both means of integration.
Fig. 1. Examples of motion event expressions from participants' narratives. (A) Manner and path expressed simultaneously. This example shows a Spanish speaker describing an event in which a cat, having swallowed a bowling ball, proceeds rapidly down a steep street in a wobbling, rolling manner. The gesture shown here naturally accompanies his speech. Here, manner (wiggling) and path (trajectory to the speaker's right) are expressed together in a single holistic movement. (B) Manner and path expressed sequentially. This example shows a third-cohort signer describing the same rolling event in Nicaraguan Sign Language. Here, manner (circling) and path (trajectory to signer's right) are expressed in two separate signs, assembled into a sequence. (The video clips from which the frames were drawn can be viewed at Science Online.) [View Larger Version of this Image (70K GIF file)]
Two analyses compared, across groups, the use of each method of integration. Figure 2A shows the proportion of the expressions produced by each participant that include manner and path simultaneously. All of the Spanish speakers’ gestures (1.0) and most of the first-cohort signers’ expressions (0.73) use this approach. Second- and third-cohort signers produce relatively fewer expressions of this type (0.32 and 0.38). Figure 2B shows the proportion of expressions produced by each participant that articulate manner and path sequentially. Such sequences are never observed in the Spanish speakers’ gestures (0). First-cohort signers sometimes include such sequences (0.27); second- and third-cohort signers include such sequences in most of their expressions (0.78 and 0.73).
Fig. 2. (A) The proportion of expressions that include manner and path that articulate them simultaneously within a single gesture or sign. Proportions were computed for each participant. Bars indicate mean proportions for each of the four groups; error bars indicate SE. All of the co-speech gestures and most of the first-cohort signers' expressions articulated manner and path simultaneously. Second- and third-cohort signers produce relatively fewer expressions of this type. Proportions differ significantly across the four groups (Kruskal-Wallis, P < 0.02, df = 3, {chi}2 = 10.:sunglasses:. Post hoc analyses with Bonferroni adjustment indicate that the Spanish speakers differ significantly from second-cohort signers (Mann-Whitney, P < 0.04) and marginally from third-cohort signers (Mann-Whitney, P < 0.06). (B) The proportion of expressions that include manner and path that articulate them sequentially in a string of manner-only and path-only elements. Proportions were computed for each participant. Bars indicate mean proportions for each of the four groups; error bars indicate SE. These sequential expressions are never observed in the co-speech gestures. First-cohort signers sometimes produce such sequences; second- and third-cohort signers include them in most of their expressions. Proportions differ significantly across the four groups (Kruskal-Wallis, P < 0.01, df = 3, {chi}2 = 14.7). Post hoc analyses with Bonferroni adjustment indicate that the Spanish speakers differ significantly from both second-cohort signers (Mann-Whitney, P < 0.02) and third-cohort signers (Mann-Whitney, P < 0.03). [View Larger Version of this Image (13K GIF file)]
In appearance, the signs very much resembled the gestures that accompany speech. The movements of the hands and body in the sign language are clearly derived from a gestural source. Nonetheless, the analyses reveal a qualitative difference between gesturing and signing. In gesture, manner and path were integrated by expressing them simultaneously and holistically, the way they occur in the motion itself. Despite this analog, holistic nature of the gesturing that surrounded them, the first cohort of children, who started building NSL in the late 1970s, evidently introduced the possibility of dissecting out manner and path and assembling them into a sequence of elemental units. As second and third cohorts learned the language in the mid-1980s and 1990s, they rapidly made this segmented, sequenced construction the preferred means of expressing motion events. NSL thus quickly acquired the discrete, combinatorial nature that is a hallmark of language.
Note that this change to the language, in the short term, entails a loss of information. When representations express manner and path separately, it is no longer iconically clear that the two aspects of movement occurred simultaneously, within a single event. For example, roll followed by downward might have instead referred to two separate events, meaning “rolling, then descending.”
However, the communicative power gained by combining elements more than offsets this potential for ambiguity. Elements and sequencing provide the building blocks for linguistic constructions (such as phrases and sentences) whose structure assigns meaning beyond the simple sum of the individual words. We observed one such structured sequence pattern that has emerged specifically for expressing simultaneity. A sign can be produced before and after another sign or phrase in an A-B-A construction, essentially embedding the second element within the first, yielding expressions such as roll descend roll. This string can serve as a structural unit within a larger expression like cat [roll descend roll], or can even be embedded within another sign, as in waddle [roll descend roll] waddle, and so on. These A-B-A constructions appeared in about one-third of the coded expressions (0.37) by participants from all three cohorts: four first-cohort signers, seven second-cohort signers, and six third-cohort signers. They were used to link various simultaneous aspects of events, including agent and action (cat climb cat), ground and action (climb pipe climb), and manner and path (roll descend roll). We observed 15 examples of these constructions applied specifically for combining manner and path information, again by signers of all three cohorts: two first-cohort signers, four second-cohort signers, and four third-cohort signers. They never appeared in the gestures of the Spanish speakers, and they represent a temporal hierarchy not found in motion events themselves.
Such hierarchical combinations are central to the language engine, enabling the production of an infinite set of utterances with a finite set of elements. Thus, the emergence of this construction in NSL represents a shift from gesture-like to language-like expression.
It is informative that the first-cohort signers, who originated the language when they were children in the late 1970s, continue to produce it today in a form closer to its gestural model. We take this as an indication of the extent of their impact on NSL before the mid-1980s, when they reached adolescence. The children who were arriving in the mid-1980s then became NSL’s second wave of creative learners, picking up where the first cohort left off and making changes that were never fully acquired by now-adolescent first-cohort signers (15, 16). The difference today between first- and second-cohort signers therefore indicates what children could do that adolescents and adults could not. It appears that the processes of dissection, reanalysis, and recombination are among those that become less available beyond adolescence. Such an age effect is consistent with, and would partially explain, the preadolescent sensitive period for language acquisition discussed in other work (21, 22). Using their early learning skills, those who were still children in the mid-1980s developed NSL into the more discrete and combinatorial system that they, and the children who followed in the 1990s, still exhibit today.
Because NSL is such a young language, recently created by children, its changes reveal learning mechanisms available during childhood. Our observations highlight two of these mechanisms. The first is a dissecting, segmental approach to bundles of information; this analytical approach appears to override other patterns of organization in the input, to the point of breaking apart previously unanalyzed wholes. The second is a predisposition for linear sequencing; sequential combinations appear even when it is physically possible to combine elements simultaneously, and despite the availability of a simultaneous model. We propose that such learning processes leave an imprint on languages—observable in mature languages in their core, universal properties—including discrete elements (such as words and morphemes) combined into hierarchically organized constructions (such as phrases and sentences).
Accordingly, these learning mechanisms should influence language emergence and change as long as there are children available to take up a language. Consistent with this account, linear sequencing of elements (even when representing simultaneous aspects of an event) appears to be an initially favored device in language emergence (23). For example, strong word order regularities are well documented in creoles, young languages that arise out of particular social situations of language contact (24–26). Some theories of creolization hold that child learners drive this process (27, 28). Our findings, in line with these approaches, favor a degree of child influence in identifying and sequencing elements (29).
However, these learning predispositions will not fully determine a language’s eventual structure. For example, many sign languages use simultaneous combinations in addition to sequential ones. Nonetheless, even in cases where adults use simultaneous constructions, the pattern of children’s acquisition points to a preference for linear sequencing (23). For example, research on the acquisition of American Sign Language (ASL) (23, 30) has shown that children initially break complex verb expressions down into sequential morphemes, rather than produce multiple verb elements together in the single, simultaneous movement found in adult models. In ASL, oversegmentation during acquisition was observed across a number of element types, including the agent and patient of a transitive event, and, as in NSL, the manner and path of a motion event. These elements correspond to semantic units that are relevant to lexicalization patterns in many (possibly all) languages (20). Thus, the elements chosen for segmentation may reveal the very primitives that children are predisposed to seek out as basic, grammatical units.
Such primitives, and the processes that isolate and recombine them, are central to children’s language-learning machinery today. Whether these drove the formation of the very first human languages depends on whether languages shaped learning abilities, or vice versa. We speculate that a combination of the two was the case. Once language developed a discrete and hierarchical nature, children who tended toward analytical and combinatorial learning would have an advantage acquiring it (3). In this way, evolutionary pressures would shape children’s language-learning (and now, language-building) mechanisms to be analytical and combinatorial. On the other hand, once humans were equipped with analytical, combinatorial learning mechanisms, any subsequently learned languages would be shaped into discrete and hierarchically organized systems (4, 5).
Although our findings are consistent with both directions of effect in the evolution of learners and languages, they are at odds with accounts in which such attributes evolved externally, were passed from generation to generation solely through cultural transmission, and were never reflected in the nature of the learning mechanism (7). In studies of mature languages, the potential imprint of the learning mechanism is redundant with, and hence experimentally obscured by, preexisting language structure. But the rapid restructuring of Nicaraguan Sign Language as it is passed down through successive cohorts of learners shows that even where discreteness and hierarchical combination are absent from the language environment, human learning abilities are capable of creating them anew.
References and Notes
* 1. C. F. Hockett, Refurbishing Our Foundations: Elementary Linguistics from an Advanced Point of View (Benjamins, Philadelphia, 1987).
* 2. M. H. Christiansen, S. Kirby, Trends Cognit. Sci. 7, 300 (2003). [CrossRef] [ISI] [Medline]
* 3. R. Jackendoff, Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution (Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 2002).
* 4. M. D. Hauser, N. Chomsky, W. T. Fitch, Science 298, 1569 (2002).[Abstract/Free Full Text]
* 5. S. Pinker, P. Bloom, Behav. Brain Sci. 13, 707 (1990). [ISI]
* 6. S. Kirby, Function, Selection, and Innateness: The Emergence of Language Universals (Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 1999).
* 7. M. Tomasello, in Language Evolution, M. H. Christiansen, S. Kirby, Eds. (Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 2003), pp. 94–110.
* 8. L. Polich, But with Sign Language You Can Do So Much (Gallaudet Univ. Press, in press).
* 9. R. J. Senghas, thesis, University of Rochester (1997).
* 10. S. Goldin-Meadow, in Language Acquisition: The State of the Art, E. Wanner, L. R. Gleitman, Eds. (Cambridge Univ. Press, New York, 1982), pp. 51–77.
* 11. J. P. Morford, Lang. Commun. 16, 165 (1996). [CrossRef] [ISI]
* 12. M. Coppola, thesis, University of Rochester (2002).
* 13. J. Kegl, A. Senghas, M. Coppola, in Language Creation and Language Change: Creolization, Diachrony, and Development, M. DeGraff, Ed. (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1999), pp. 179–237.
* 14. A. Senghas, thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1995).
* 15. A. Senghas, M. Coppola, Psychol. Sci. 12, 323 (2001). [CrossRef] [ISI] [Medline]
* 16. A. Senghas, Cogn. Dev. 18, 511 (2003). [CrossRef] [ISI]
* 17. See supporting data on Science Online.
* 18. S. Kita, A. Özyürek, J. Mem. Lang. 48, 16 (2003). [CrossRef] [ISI]
* 19. D. McNeill, Hand and Mind: What Gestures Reveal About Thought (Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1992).
* 20. L. Talmy, in Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon, Vol. III, T. Shopen, Ed. (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1985), pp. 57–149.
* 21. E. Lenneberg, Biological Foundations of Language (Wiley, New York, 1967).
* 22. E. L. Newport, Cogn. Sci. 14, 11 (1990). [CrossRef] [ISI]
* 23. E. Newport, in Aspects of the Development of Competence, W. A. Collins, Ed., vol. 14 of Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology (Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, 1981), pp. 93–124.
* 24. J. Holm, Pidgins and Creoles, Vol. 1: Theory and Structure (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1988).
* 25. M. DeGraff, Ed., Language Creation and Language Change: Creolization, Diachrony, and Development (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1999).
* 26. R. W. Anderson, in Pidginization and Creolization as Language Acquisition, R. Anderson, Ed. (Newbury, Rowley, MA, 1983), pp. 1–56.
* 27. D. Bickerton, Behav. Brain Sci. 7, 173 (1984). [ISI]
* 28. G. Sankoff, S. Laberge, Kivung 6, 32 (1973).
* 29. Unlike NSL, creoles draw much of their vocabulary and possibly some grammatical structure from the languages in contact where they arise; much debate surrounds the question of the nature and degree of this influence (25).
* 30. R. P. Meier, J. Mem. Lang. 26, 362 (1987). [CrossRef] [ISI]
* 31. We thank the Nicaraguan participants for their enthusiastic participation; the Melania Morales School for Special Education, the National Nicaraguan Association of the Deaf (ANSNIC), and the Nicaraguan Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sports (MECD) for their assistance and cooperation; Quaker House, Managua, for providing testing facilities; A. Engelman, M. Flaherty, E. Housman, S. Katseff, S. Littman, J. Pyers, M. Santos, and P. Shima for assistance with data collection and analysis; and S. Bogoch, P. Hagoort, S. Pinker, and R. Short for comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. Supported by the Language and Cognition Group at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) project 051.02.040 (A.Ö.), National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) grant R01 DC00491 (Susan Goldin-Meadow and A.Ö.), Turkish Academy of Sciences grant HAO/TUBA-GEBIP/2001-2-16 (A.Ö.), a visiting faculty position in psychology at Harvard University (A.S.), and NIDCD grant R01 DC05407 (A.S.).
Supporting Online Material
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Materials and Methods
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Received for publication 11 May 2004. Accepted for publication 15 July 2004.
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TECHNICAL COMMENTS
Comment on “Children Creating Core Properties of Language: Evidence from an Emerging Sign Language in Nicaragua”
Tommaso Russo and Virginia Volterra (1 July 2005)
Science 309 (5731), 56b. [DOI: 10.1126/science.1107876]
| Full Text » | PDF »
TECHNICAL COMMENTS
Response to Comment on “Children Creating Core Properties of Language: Evidence from an Emerging Sign Language in Nicaragua”
Ann Senghas, Asli Özyürek, and Sotaro Kita (1 July 2005)
Science 309 (5731), 56c. [DOI: 10.1126/science.1110901]
| Full Text » | PDF »
PERSPECTIVES
NEUROSCIENCE:
Signposts to the Essence of Language
Michael Siegal (17 September 2004)
Science 305 (5691), 1720. [DOI: 10.1126/science.1102894]
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Well I wasnt trying to say anything about whether language is inherent or not, but to go on a tangent, I didnt catch the part of why it’s more of a leap to assume its not inherent if there are feral children(??) (except maybe the fact that they dont learn language if they hadnt learned it by an early enough age, although thats not a totally convincing reason)
I dont think it’s completely true that you can say nothing about a person’s intellgience until that person learns language… the specific aspects of intelligence that have evidence that i was thinking about were those measured by tests that dont require language. two tests i can recall offhand that they did with ‘genie’ are a test to see if she can make a reconstruction of something she saw by puttnig together some erector-set-like parts, and some kind of test that measures ones abilities to see patterns in chaos. i could concede those provide limited insight into thinking abilities, but i’ll leave ‘how limited’ an open question–also, it might be a lot more revealing to test ability to solve puzzles (i dont remember whether they did this or not)
one possible way to determine how limited those tests are in revealing thinking ability could be knowing the statistical correlations of their subjects’ proficiencies at them to the supposd “g” factor
The Nicaraguan children were deaf. They were living isolated from one another untrained in sign language without schooling of any kind. When they were brought together during the Sandinista period, they began signing to each other. They created their own language. From what I understand their language has a syntax not unlike that of other traditional languages. This phenomena supports the view that there is an innate language structure in humans.