At 3:08 AM -0500 8/15/02, David Dyer-Bennet wrote: >Frank Mayhar <frank at exit.com> writes: > > >> In the area of neuropsychology, by the way, there has been a lot of study >> of the processing of speech in the brain. (I wanted to say "language," but >> it's a lot harder to demonstrate language in general than it is to >>demonstrate >> speech.) It appears that our language ability is, indeed, hardwired, and I >> am convinced that further study will only confirm that understanding. > >There seems to be hardware support for it, is the way I'd put it. >"Hardwired" suggests a rather stronger pre-determination of how it >will come out than *I*, at least, think the evidence supports. My understanding is that any human growing up in contact with at least one other human will develop language. Bruce Schneier mentioned a case where a set of twins grew up together. I believe they were institutionalized, although perhaps it was just that their family completely isolated them. They were considered to be profoundly retarded, incapable of any learning. However, researchers discovered that the two girls had developed a language between themselves. It was a peculiar and limited language in which peanut butter was a vital element. Consider, also, hearing children born to deaf parents. Those babies will learn ASL, if that is what is spoken in the home. Babies of deaf parents babble in ASL exactly the same way babies of parents who speak babble: ba ba ba da ba ba. The child of deaf parents will make those signs with their hands. Later, as they acquire vocabulary and grammar, they make exactly the same mistakes that their hearing compatriots make, including the pronoun confusion. At a certain age, children tend to get confused by pronouns and say you instead of I. In ASL, those words are pointing at oneself, or the person one is talking to. The fact that a child makes this mistake when speaking, even though they would not make it if you asked them to point to themselves, or their mother, is one of the key indications that ASL is a natural language, and not just a code. Completely abandoned children, the ones that grow up in closets and are never spoken to, are the only people we know that don't acquire language. After a certain age, they won't be able to, either. Learning language is part of the development of a child's brain, and there's a limited window in which this can happen. Lack of language in turn limits other brain development. I think that the evidence does support the claim of hardwired. Admittedly, we can't point to the exact pieces of the genetic makeup and the precise functions within the brain that cause the acquisition of language, but observation of language acquisition in many different cultures supports that claim. -- Lydy Nickerson lydy at demesne.com lydy at lydy.com Dulciculi Aliquorum