Piggy's language myth busting thread

[Piggy]

From time to time, I get involved in tangles over some basic concepts of language, and popular misconceptions about language. So I've decided to dive in and start a thread on some of the more common myths about language, as a way of opening the door to discussion without hijacking other folks' threads.

Let's start with some of the more pervasive myths:

1. Native speakers of a language have an intuitive understanding of how it works.

Perhaps the most pervasive myth. It's odd because folks don't generally assume that because they live in a house, they therefore understand the basics of architecture and construction. Or that because they eat food, they have a sufficient understanding of nutrition. Or that because they live in a world full of matter and energy, they grasp particle physics.

And yet I continually encounter the view that anyone who speaks knows what language is and how it works. When, in fact, we're still unlocking the secrets of how language evolved, what its rules are, and how it's produced and processed in the brain.


2. Dictionaries tell us what words mean.

Dictionaries vary in quality, but all dictionaries are incomplete, contain errors, and are to some extent out of date.

Usage is what determines meaning. Usage, and usage alone. Dictionaries may have an impact on usage (tho that's rare), but it's still usage that is the arbiter of meaning.

As an analogy, imagine you're on vacation and you want a tropical cocktail you haven't had in years. You consult your guide book, which says you should expect to pay $3. You go to a bar, they charge $5. You go to another, it also charges $5. And so on -- they all charge $5.

Do you go fetch your guidebook and show the bartenders that the drink "really" costs $3? Of course not.

Same with dictionaries. Because language is a kind of currency. Words mean whatever we agree they mean, nothing more, nothing less. When a dictionary differs from usage, the dictionary is not somehow "right" and the usage somehow "wrong".

Now, if someone were using the word "flatulent" to mean "flat", then you might do them a favor by showing them the definition -- but that does not mean that it's the dictionary which determines what the word means.


3. It's possible for a word to have a "real" meaning that practically everyone who uses the word is wrong about.

See myth #2. Words mean what we agree they mean. It doesn't matter one bit what a word used to mean, or what its origins are. When people change how a word is used and what it signifies, the meaning changes. There are no arcane "real" meanings.


4. Some commonly used words aren't actually words at all.

I've actually heard educated people claim, for example, that "ain't" and "til" are "not real words". This is absurd for the same reason that the "real meaning" approach to word use is absurd.

If a term is in currency, it's a word, it has meaning -- just as, if people will accept a monetary currency, then it's currency, it has value, regardless of what any official body declares.


5. Native speakers who do not use the socially privileged dialect are using language which is inherently "ungrammatical" or "wrong".

This is probably the most persistent myth, the one that's hardest to address.

The term "ungrammatical" is often used to mean "non-standard", and in that sense, yes, unprivileged dialects can reasonably be cited for "ungrammatical" usage.

However, there's a widespread and pernicious belief that phrases such as "them dogs is mine" or "it don't mean nothing" are somehow violating the very rules of language itself, rather than the standards of some dialects (yes, even "standard" English is merely a dialect).

Often, logic is trotted out in defense of this view -- with patent absurdities such as the claim that "I ain't got none" somehow "really" means "I have some", even though no one has ever actually understood it to mean that -- but language is not logical, it's psychological. Not even the staunchest proscriptivist would abandon "they are friends of mine" for "they are friends of me", even though the latter is the "logical" choice.

6. Our language is devolving.

It's not uncommon to hear the fear expressed that our language is losing its expressiveness, devolving into a jumble of grunts and groans.

Eventually, it is feared, vast swaths of the population are going to be resigned to uttering meaningless strings of words such as "Well, y'know, I mean, like, whatever, I'm just saying, that's all". (A statement I actually overheard recently -- and which, I suspect, conveys more actual meaning than may be apparent at first glance.)

Sure, there's plenty of drivel being spoken, plenty of knee-jerk phrases that take the place of thoughtful speech. But the truth is, it has likely always been this way.

And there is always a counter current of new words, terms, and phrases to express our thoughts in other ways, or to express common ideas which were not in circulation before. Just check out the Web sites Word Spy or Urban Dictionary for a sampling.

And when you listen to conversations long enough, you'll find that the image of the monosyllabic common-man is also a myth. Just yesterday, talking with a warehouse worker with a backwoods accent as thick as Georgia clay, observing a bird threatening his own image in a mirror, the other fellow mentioned that sometimes he brings another smaller bird to join in. He said, "We was theorizin' maybe that 'uz his mate". Not exactly a word choice to fit the stereotype. And I don't think that's an exception.

So there you have it -- my language rant.

Now... let the slings and arrows begin!

[Piggy]

7. Language is a skill we learn, like driving a car or cooking pasta.

Language is not a learned skill, like riding a bike. It is a hard-wired, biologically determined developmental process, like sexual maturation.

In the case of the latter, if the body is normal, and the environment is sufficiently rich (nutrition, sunlight, physical activity), all human children will go through the same stages of sexual development, albeit at different rates.

Similarly, if the body is normal, and the environment is sufficiently rich (the kid is exposed to language being used in context), all human children will go through the same stages of linguistic development, albeit at different rates.

A kid is not going to learn to drive by riding in a car or watching traffic.

But if a kid is exposed to language, you can't stop him/her from learning it.

Even their "errors" follow a general pattern, and attempting to correct these errors has little or no effect on how quickly they'll learn the right phrasing. A kid will say "goed" when s/he grasps the connection between -ed and past tense, and will say "went" when s/he moves beyond that stage of overgeneralization.

It's not learning, it's biology.

[Jeff Corey]

You make a number of moot points, sirrah.

[cyborg]

Insightful. Here are my comments.

1. I agree wholeheartedly - it is more than possible for someone to have an intuitive sense of how something works without being able to formalise it. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you know how you do it - that's a higher order notion.

2. Language as currency is certainly the apt analogy. Of course that's why we have dictionaries - so we can pin down the currency of words and consequently increase the value they have.

[Jeff Corey]

[B]...Even their "errors" follow a general pattern, and attempting to correct these errors has little or no effect on how quickly they'll learn the right phrasing. A kid will say "goed" when s/he grasps the connection between -ed and past tense, and will say "went" when s/he moves beyond that stage of overgeneralization....
Technically, that's called "overregularization", and I know of no data that show it cannot be corrected by proper training.
Do you?

[drkitten]

Technically, that's called "overregularization", and I know of no data that show it cannot be corrected by proper training.
Do you?

I'm not sure what you're saying here.

Children will "naturally" progress out of the overregularization stage of language learning, just as they will "naturally" progress from the two word to the three word stage.

I know of no studies that suggest this process can be accelerated by training, and quite a few that suggest that it can't.

[Piggy]

Technically, that's called "overregularization", and I know of no data that show it cannot be corrected by proper training.
Do you?

Yeah, actually. I believe Pinker discusses this topic and gives cites in "The Language Instinct". And it was a topic in my cognitive courses in the English Dept. I had to sell off most of my texts (and the vast majority of my other books) when I moved a few years back, but I've kept all my notebooks and handouts. Might take me a while to dig up the references, though.

If you don't find it in Pinker, let me know and I'll dive into my files.

The upshot of the research we looked at was that attempts to "correct" kids did not have any significant effect on the rate of their linguistic development. But it's been a few years since I bolted from academia, so it's possible that newer data may show otherwise -- but if so, I haven't heard of it.

[Piggy]

You make a number of moot points, sirrah.

Are you using the term in its ungrammatical sense or with its real meaning? ;)

(Just kidding, folks)

[sphenisc]

Insightful. Here are my comments.

1. I agree wholeheartedly - it is more than possible for someone to have an intuitive sense of how something works without being able to formalise it. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you know how you do it - that's a higher order notion.

2. Language as currency is certainly the apt analogy. Of course that's why we have dictionaries - so we can pin down the currency of words and consequently increase the value they have.

Your point 1. makes no sense - do you think that people have an intuitive understanding of how their language works or not?

[Jackalgirl]

7. Language is a skill we learn, like driving a car or cooking pasta.

Language is not a learned skill, like riding a bike. It is a hard-wired, biologically determined developmental process, like sexual maturation.

In the case of the latter, if the body is normal, and the environment is sufficiently rich (nutrition, sunlight, physical activity), all human children will go through the same stages of sexual development, albeit at different rates.

Similarly, if the body is normal, and the environment is sufficiently rich (the kid is exposed to language being used in context), all human children will go through the same stages of linguistic development, albeit at different rates.

A kid is not going to learn to drive by riding in a car or watching traffic.

But if a kid is exposed to language, you can't stop him/her from learning it.

Even their "errors" follow a general pattern, and attempting to correct these errors has little or no effect on how quickly they'll learn the right phrasing. A kid will say "goed" when s/he grasps the connection between -ed and past tense, and will say "went" when s/he moves beyond that stage of overgeneralization.

It's not learning, it's biology.

I agree, but not totally. I'm going to quote my Intro to Cultural Anthropology book here:

All normal humans are born with the ability to communicate thorugh language and may spend a considerable part of each day doing so. Indeed, language is so much a part of our lives that it involves everything that we do, and everything that we do involves language. There is no doubt that our ability to communicate, whether through sounds or gestures (sign languages, such as the American Sign Language used by the hearing impared, are fully developed languages in their own right) rests squarely upon our biological makeup. We are "programmed" for language, although only in a general sort of way. Beyond the cries of babies, which are not learned but which do communicate, humans must learn their language.[emphasis by Jackalgirl] And so it is that any normal child from anywhere in the world readily learns the language of his or her culture." (Haviland, Prins, Walrath, McBride, <u>Cultural Anthropology: The Human Challenge</u>, Eleventh Edition, 2005, Wadsworth, p. 90)

I guess my point is that you are absolutely correct -- that humans are hard-wired for language -- but that the acquisition of the language requires practice in an immersion environment; in other words, it is entirely possible for one person to be more skilled at self-expression, for example, than another person, because he or she has had more practice -- and the environment is absolutely key, too, since some environments are more "rich" in terms of language use than others. So it's not entirely the same as sexual development, which is independent of human contact, whereas language most definitely is not.

So, in other words, I think that there is a component of skill involved, developed through practice, even though the general ability to acquire language is inherent.

P.S. Pardon the clumsy and incorrect citation format. I'm lazy. And pardon the clumsy attempt to explain myself. I'm tired. ; )

[cyborg]

Your point 1. makes no sense - do you think that people have an intuitive understanding of how their language works or not?

Do people communicate with language or not?

Does being able to communicate with language means they formally understand language or not?

As such is it possible for people to have an intuitive understanding of language that allows them to communicate but does not allow them to formalise why and how they communicate?

[calebprime]

If you don't find it in Pinker, let me know and I'll dive into my files.



/* helpful small-dog mode on */

no mention in the index or the glossary for "overregularization" or "regularization" that I see....

Different Pinker...Blank Slate maybe?

[sphenisc]

Do people communicate with language or not?

Does being able to communicate with language means they formally understand language or not?

As such is it possible for people to have an intuitive understanding of language that allows them to communicate but does not allow them to formalise why and how they communicate?

Do you always answer a question with a question?

[robinson]

So there you have it -- my language rant.

Now... let the slings and arrows begin!

That wasn't a rant. YOU HAVE TO USE ALL CAPS and exclamation marks and stuff for it to be a rant!!!

.:wackywink:

[calebprime]

arf.

nothing in the blank slate or
How the Mind Works.

must be a concept under a different word...

[Solus]

I agree with your points as far as my understanding goes. I definitely agree native language speakers DO NOT have a intuitive understanding of how language works. If that were true my grammar here would be perfect, as it is I vaguely understand the structure of language.

Ah, I see your point is about the actual process itself. Well I definitely agree anyrate.

[cyborg]

Do you always answer a question with a question?

Can you not infer the answer through the train of reasoning I set out?

[Piggy]

Jackalgirl, regarding post #10, yeah, I'd agree with that.

We all learn language instinctively. But some are more skilled than others.

And our skills vary both because we have varying innate abilities (just as we do with athletics, math, etc.) and because we have varying degrees of practice (just as we do with athletics, math, etc.).

[Dr Adequate]

1. I agree wholeheartedly - it is more than possible for someone to have an intuitive sense of how something works without being able to formalise it. You are in fact disagreeing wholeheartedly with Piggy.

[Piggy]

no mention in the index or the glossary for "overregularization" or "regularization" that I see....

Different Pinker...Blank Slate maybe?

I still haven't gotten around to Blank Slate.

You might try a search on "formal language theory" and "negative evidence" in conjunction with "explicit correction" or "overt correction" or "parental correction".

Here are a couple of links to a Pinker paper and an abstract. Although unfortunately, he doesn't delve into any studies on the effect of explicit correction. However, it's important to note that he focuses on "negative evidence" (what a kid hears others saying in context) and apparently, at this point, finds the issue of explicit correction an uninteresting topic for research, which is significant.

http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Py104/pinker.langacq.html

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0037-976X(1992)57%3A4%3Ci%2Biii%2Bv%3AOILA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-X

Here's a page from a University of North Carolina linguistics course which touches on the topic:

http://www.unc.edu/~gerfen/Ling30Sp2002/acquisition.html

Direct teaching and intensive practice have relatively little effect. This is true. Correcting children and drilling them on grammar won't make them learn language any faster. Compare this to say, piano lessons. Without the drills and intense lessons, it is very difficult to learn to play the piano.

[Dr Adequate]

1. Native speakers of a language have an intuitive understanding of how it works.

Perhaps the most pervasive myth. When, in fact, we're still unlocking the secrets of ... what its rules are. This seems self-contradictory. The reason it's both necessary and possible to research what the rules of language are is that we do have an intuitive understanding of language, but not an explict and formal one.

(By analogy, people could juggle long before Galileo discovered the locally applicable theory of gravity.)

[cyborg]

You are in fact disagreeing wholeheartedly with Piggy.

You're right. Hence proving my point. Or something.

[Piggy]

cyborg, correct me if I'm wrong here....

Would it be accurate to paraphrase your point this way:

Seems you're drawing a distinction between functional and formal understanding of a process. For instance, I have a functional understanding of driving -- I can do it, and I can teach others to do it -- but I don't have a formal understanding of driving -- I couldn't begin to explain to you how my intention to make a right turn is translated into movements of my body and, consequently, movement of the tires.

Is that close?

If that's the case, then I agree with you. Many folks who have a functional understanding of language (and even a formal understanding of the rules of the privileged dialect) do not have a formal understanding of language, i.e., what's going on in our brains when we learn, hear, speak, read, and write.

[cyborg]

Yes, that would accurately surmise my point: a machine does not need to understand engineering principles in order to operate - it simply does so empirically.

[Piggy]

1. Native speakers of a language have an intuitive understanding of how it works.

Perhaps the most pervasive myth. When, in fact, we're still unlocking the secrets of ... what its rules are.

This seems self-contradictory. The reason it's both necessary and possible to research what the rules of language are is that we do have an intuitive understanding of language, but not an explict and formal one.

(By analogy, people could juggle long before Galileo discovered the locally applicable theory of gravity.)

Perhaps I was being sloppy there. Thanks for pointing it out.

The "rules" we're unlocking are the universal rules describing what's going on in our brains when we use language.

While we all use language intuitively, we don't have an intuitive understanding of what's going on when we do that, any more than we have an intuitive understanding of how our bodies turn food into body mass and energy.

The myth I'm attacking here is the attitude that "I know how to speak English; I know what the rules are", when what the person actually knows are the formal rules of the standard dialect which they were taught in English class.

And it is that conflation of the formal rules of standard usage with the biological rules of language that helps perpetuate some of the other myths, such as the all-too-common notion that, for instance, using "ain't" is not just a bad idea for a job interview at a bank, but that it is somehow fundamentally "wrong", that it "violates English grammar", even when used at home among speakers whose dialect includes it.

[calebprime]

well here's a summary for us numpties

http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~welby/201/lg-acq.pdf.

[Piggy]

Or, to put it more succinctly, the myth is to believe that the formal rules of standard grammar and syntax which we're taught in school, or even the descriptive rules of our own dialect, are the rules of language.

They ain't.

And that's why we have to develop modeling systems like X-bar theory, to try to understand and explain the fundamental rules underlying all language, in order to try to comprehend what is not intuitively accessible to us.

[Piggy]

well here's a summary for us numpties

http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~welby/201/lg-acq.pdf.

One quick caveat. In this outline, "negative evidence" is defined as "explicit correction". If you read Pinker, you'll find that he does not use the term in that way.

For Pinker, "negative evidence" is the disjunct between a child's usage and the usage of others. So, for example, if a child is overregularizing by saying "goed" -- which perhaps some of his peers are also saying -- in time s/he will use the "negative evidence" that no adults are saying "goed" but are saying "went" instead, and will begin to use "went" rather than "goed".

If, however, the child were suddenly cut off from adult speech, s/he would never make the transition from "goed" to "went".

[T'ai Chi]

I think a language myth is that so and so language is harder than others.

Another langauge myth is that 'I'm too old, I can't learn so and so language'.

[Piggy]

I think a language myth is that so and so language is harder than others.

Another langauge myth is that 'I'm too old, I can't learn so and so language'.

I'd have to disagree with you somewhat on both counts.

All languages are equally easy to learn if you're born into a culture that uses them. But some languages are indeed harder to learn, for different people, as second (or later) languages. For me, for example, it's easier to learn Spanish than to learn a click language, or a tonal language, or a declined language.

For many non-native speakers, English is very challenging, because it's a hybrid language with non-phonetic spelling and extensive irregular forms. Chinese nationals I've tutored get extremely frustrated at the lack of regularity in English spelling, pronunciation, and syntax, for example.

However, I'd say that there is a related myth, and that is:

8. Some languages are less grammatical than others.

In fact, all languages have grammar and syntax. All languages are complex. And what's fascinating about newly developed languages (such as those arising from pidgins, or those developed by isolated deaf populations) is that it doesn't take long for standard syntax to arise organically.

On the second point, as a general rule, it does indeed become more difficult to learn a new language as we age.

[Hokulele]

In addition, it may be easy to learn the grammar, vocabulary, and syntax, but some pronunciations will always be difficult for people raised outside of the language. For example, my mother is first-generation Japanese. She went to an English language high school, and has lived in the US for almost 50 years. She still cannot differentiate between a spoken "r" or "l". As far as she is concerned, the word "squirrel" should be pronounced "chipmunk".

I have a terrible time with the tonalities in spoken Mandarin.

[Mercutio]

Piggy--you might like to read THE LAD WAS A LADY, OR THE MOTHER OF ALL LANGUAGE LEARNING: A REVIEW OF MOERK'S FIRST LANGUAGE: TAUGHT AND LEARNED. (Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 1994, vol 62-2, p. 323-329) Link, if it works. (http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1334466&blobtype=pdf) Otherwise, it is on pubmed.

[Piggy]

In addition, it may be easy to learn the grammar, vocabulary, and syntax, but some pronunciations will always be difficult for people raised outside of the language.

Yes, and what's interesting is that we actually lose the ability to distinguish among certain sounds.

Babies hear it all, and they say it all when they babble. But as they develop, they come to understand which sounds make a difference in their world.

So for an American kid, there's a meaningful difference between l and r, but no meaningful difference between a "hissed" s and a "whistled" s.

Some of these sound distinctions remain easy to perceive. The whistled s, for example, is a feature of some US dialects, and it's easy to notice even if it's not in your dialect.

But research shows that some phonetic distinctions are not perceived at all by people who do not use them in their own languages.

I'll never forget riding out to Xel-Ha with a Mayan driver who also spoke English and Spanish. I speak English and Spanish, but not Mayan. He tried to correct our pronunciation of "Xel-Ha" (which sounds something like "shell hah") but no matter how many times we tried, we never got it right, and I couldn't hear any difference in what we were saying and what he was saying, and neither could anyone else but the Mayan. Finally, he gave up.

Similarly, I once listened to a discussion of the various clicks in an African click tongue, and many of them sounded exactly alike to my ear.

[Piggy]

Piggy--you might like to read THE LAD WAS A LADY, OR THE MOTHER OF ALL LANGUAGE LEARNING: A REVIEW OF MOERK'S FIRST LANGUAGE: TAUGHT AND LEARNED. (Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 1994, vol 62-2, p. 323-329) Link, if it works. (http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1334466&blobtype=pdf) Otherwise, it is on pubmed.

What do you find interesting about it, btw?

Seems a little dated to me. After all, we've moved beyond Chomsky. And the central role of parents/caregivers in a child's language acquisition is widely recognized.

I don't see that this changes anything w/ regard to the role (or lack of it) of explicit correction in language acquisition. Pinker's discussion of negative evidence seems more useful.

There are some obvious errors in the reasoning, it seems to me. For example:

Thus, in an example on page 86, Eve says, "Because I caught _____"; her mother responds, "You caught? What did you catch?" Responding to her mother's word "catch" as a grammatical correction of the word "caught," rather than as an attempt to find out what she caught, Eve responds, "I catch my bicycle." Eve responds to what sounds to her like a grammatical correction because that is apparently exactly what the mother usually engaged in.

No one has any idea if the child was "responding to her mother's word... as a grammatical correction" or "to what sounds to her like a grammatical correction".

Seems to me she simply answered her mother's question with a statement that incorporates a mimic of the last version of the word she heard.

Child: Because I caught.... <child pauses>
Mother: You caught? What did you catch?
Child: I catch my bicycle.

[Piggy]

Btw, a strictly behaviorist model of language acquisition (as I understand it, and I admit I may not be up to date on that) is shot completely out of the water by cases of spontaneous, organic generation of full-blown complex grammar by populations who develop new languages in isolation.

The most interesting area of inquiry right now, to me, is in parameter switching. That model has been around for awhile, but some cool stuff being done and published.

[Earthborn]

Regarding 2 and 3, this is true to some degree, but the meaning of some words, specifically scientific terms and units of measurement, are so closely guarded by authorities that protect their meaning to the point that everyone who uses the word meaning something else is simply wrong. Not all words are allowed to have the same shifts in meaning. And people try to protect the meaning of words from shifting by writing dictionaries and treating dictionaries as authorities on their meaning, and that's probably a good thing because communication would become very difficult if the meaning of words has too much variation.

With 7, I don't think you make a whole lot of sense. First I don't think you can claim that all children go through the same stages of 'sexual maturation'. And you claim that stages prove that language is not a skill that is learned but that riding a bike is learned, ignoring the obvious fact that learning to ride a bike also requires going through stages of development, and also require an environment sufficiently rich of bikes.

Then you say that if a child is exposed to language you cannot stop the child from learning the language. How this proves that language is not learnt is a mystery to me.

"It's not learning, it's biology" :boggled:
How does that even make sense? Is the study of how organisms learn not a field of biology? Is learning done through some other means than nervous tissue, which is biological?

[Mercutio]

Piggy, I am happy to hear you say we have moved beyond Chomsky. My students, at least in their cognition and linguistics classes, have not. Brown's (1973) conclusions (that language is not shaped by parents), and the "language arises too quickly for learning to account for" beliefs are still taught--Chomsky's review of Skinner's "Verbal Behavior" is still seen as an actual smackdown (despite MacCorquodale's rebuttal) instead of a complete misinterpretation. I still have cognitive psychologists ask me "what was the stimulus for that sentence?" as if behaviorists think of language as some reflexive response.

The reason I suggested it to you (had to run before completing my post to my satisfaction) was for the examples in the beginning, supporting your assertion of the existence of a belief that language was not learned, but emerges like Athena from the head of Zeus, fully armored and ready to go.

[Jeff Corey]

Are you using the term in its ungrammatical sense or with its real meaning? ;)

(Just kidding, folks)
Its common meaning of "arguable", not its legal definition of "already settled".

[Jeff Corey]

Piggy, I am happy to hear you say we have moved beyond Chomsky. My students, at least in their cognition and linguistics classes, have not. Brown's (1973) conclusions (that language is not shaped by parents), and the "language arises too quickly for learning to account for" beliefs are still taught--Chomsky's review of Skinner's "Verbal Behavior" is still seen as an actual smackdown (despite MacCorquodale's rebuttal) instead of a complete misinterpretation. I still have cognitive psychologists ask me "what was the stimulus for that sentence?" as if behaviorists think of language as some reflexive response.

The reason I suggested it to you (had to run before completing my post to my satisfaction) was for the examples in the beginning, supporting your assertion of the existence of a belief that language was not learned, but emerges like Athena from the head of Zeus, fully armored and ready to go.

"There is no black spider on this table." Whitehead (I think)

[Tief]

So, when I tell people that 'atheist' means 'without a belief in a god or gods' when they think it means 'I know there is no god' I am wrong because probably more people use that meaning for 'atheist' than the one I describe?

In this word, I would say there are 2 communities using the word to mean 2 different things. Which is correct?

[Jeff Corey]

??

[calebprime]

So, when I tell people that 'atheist' means 'without a belief in a god or gods' when they think it means 'I know there is no god' I am wrong because probably more people use that meaning for 'atheist' than the one I describe?

In this word, I would say there are 2 communities using the word to mean 2 different things. Which is correct?

Maybe this--if there were two distinct communities, and they really did have two distinct usages, they would both be right. They would have to explain themselves to each other.

The distinction you are drawing seems slender to me, so what you are really doing, maybe is making your beliefs more palatable.

Maybe the difference you propose is between absence of belief and active denial. A few extra words to your people, I'm sure, clarifies the distinction.


Piggy has discussed atheism at great length in the "No God, you say?"
thread. forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=63207

which goes on forever on the subject of the mysterious invisible pink icecube.

But I get muddled when I think this way, like the Dennis Hopper character trying to describe Col. Kurtz...:D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXq3eIPIqas

[Piggy]

Piggy, I am happy to hear you say we have moved beyond Chomsky. <snip>

The reason I suggested it to you (had to run before completing my post to my satisfaction) was for the examples in the beginning, supporting your assertion of the existence of a belief that language was not learned, but emerges like Athena from the head of Zeus, fully armored and ready to go.

Gotcha. Thanks for the clarification.

Yeah, Chomsky was important, but a lot has been done since he came on the scene. It's a shame not everyone has kept up, but that always seems to be the way of it.

In fact (speaking of academics not keeping up) one of my major beefs with my English department was that the "reading theory" courses -- or syllabus sections -- for grad students in lit were still stuck on Lyotard and Derrida and the neo-pomo political theorists, who were utterly useless. Not one word about current neurological research.

Which is why -- even though I examined in rhetoric and American lit -- I took courses with the linguistics crowd, because they were the only ones interested in concrete research, and had no use for armchair philosophy.

[Piggy]

Regarding 2 and 3, this is true to some degree, but the meaning of some words, specifically scientific terms and units of measurement, are so closely guarded by authorities that protect their meaning to the point that everyone who uses the word meaning something else is simply wrong. Not all words are allowed to have the same shifts in meaning.
Good point. That's an area I hadn't considered.

[Piggy]

With 7, I don't think you make a whole lot of sense. First I don't think you can claim that all children go through the same stages of 'sexual maturation'. And you claim that stages prove that language is not a skill that is learned but that riding a bike is learned, ignoring the obvious fact that learning to ride a bike also requires going through stages of development, and also require an environment sufficiently rich of bikes.

Then you say that if a child is exposed to language you cannot stop the child from learning the language. How this proves that language is not learnt is a mystery to me.

"It's not learning, it's biology" :boggled:
How does that even make sense? Is the study of how organisms learn not a field of biology? Is learning done through some other means than nervous tissue, which is biological?
Of course there are variations, but by and large, if you have a healthy human body, you're going to go through pretty much the same process of physical maturation as everyone else, because your body is "programmed" to develop in a human way. You're not going to "learn" how to phyically mature -- it just happens. But sure, there's individual variation (like with me, for instance, I got a good dose of Cherokee genes on my mother's side, so I can't grow a beard or moustache like my brothers and father can).

Language is like that, too. We don't "learn" language in the way we learn to ride a bike. There's no hard-wiring for bicycle riding. We have to learn that through instruction. We're hard-wired for language. All it takes is being in an environment where language is being used, and our brains will follow a regular pattern of language development. We're programmed to acquire language in a way that we're not programmed to, say, drive cars or play poker.

So I misspoke earlier. I should have said "if a child is exposed to language being used in context, you cannot stop him/her from acquiring it." That may have avoided the confusion.

[Piggy]

Another difference, btw, between language acquisition and learning to ride a bike is that you can learn to ride a bike at any age, once you're old enough to get on the thing and balance and pedal. Not so with language. If you're not exposed to language by sometime around puberty, the brain modules responsible for language acquisition appear to turn off, for the most part.

So it's not a learned skill like, say, playing poker. It's a developmental function of the human brain. Our brains are specifically designed to do it, and do it extremely well, without any explicit instruction whatsoever. Kids who never have their grammar corrected will acquire it just as well as those who do. Whereas kids who receive no instruction in bike riding are going to take a lot longer to learn than kids who do -- and may never learn at all.

[Piggy]

So, when I tell people that 'atheist' means 'without a belief in a god or gods' when they think it means 'I know there is no god' I am wrong because probably more people use that meaning for 'atheist' than the one I describe?

In this word, I would say there are 2 communities using the word to mean 2 different things. Which is correct?

Neither of you are "wrong", which means both of you are correct. Yes, in this case, there are 2 groups of users who use the term "atheist" in different ways. That's the reality of language, and it's not uncommon at all.

Going back to the currency model, asking what "atheist" means is like asking what $50 is worth. If you're in Manhattan, it's probably not the same as when you're in rural Georgia.

What both groups should be aware of, however, to avoid mistaking each other's meaning, is that this difference exists. So it would be a mistake for someone in the "I know it's not" group to hear someone in the "no belief" group use the term, and assume s/he meant "I know it's not". But of course, this type of communication error happens all the time, all over the world -- sometimes with truly tragic results.

Fortunately, these mistakes are usually minor and easily corrected -- like when a woman from up North became very confused when I told her "I like to hit a deer" on the highway. :D

And no, it's not a matter of which group is larger. Since words can have multiple meanings which differ across user groups, the size of any one user group is irrelevant to the others. In my grandmother's generation, in her geographical location, what I'd call a "skillet" was called a "spider". The fact that this usage was relatively rare -- and is probably about to die out altogether if it hasn't already -- did not make their definition of "spider" somehow wrong.

Now, if someone uses the word "atheist" to mean "nougat", they're wrong. But that's because nobody else accepts that meaning -- no one would understand it (Humpty-Dumptyism). It would be like me deciding, unilaterally, that $50 would buy me a 2 week vacation at a five-star resort. The values of currency, and the meanings of words, depend on how we share them. So they are not arbitrary, but they are also not fixed.

[robinson]

'Curiouser and curiouser!' cried Alice.

[Piggy]

Piggy has discussed atheism at great length in the "No God, you say?"
thread. forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=63207

which goes on forever on the subject of the mysterious invisible pink icecube.

Ouch. Looking back at some of my posts of that thread really made me cringe.

I hope I'm a kindler, gentler Piggy now, due in part to my experience here. I was harboring a lot of anger and bottling up a considerable dose of arrogance from my experience with a host of narrow-minded, ignorant fundamentalists, and I carried it over to people who deserved better treatment.

I owe some serious my-bads to drkitten, among others. If you're still nosing around this thread, doc, consider my little curly tail well tucked.

[Gurdur]

7........

Language is not a learned skill, like riding a bike. It is a hard-wired, biologically determined developmental process, like sexual maturation.
.....
It's not learning, it's biology.
All your points were extremely good and very valid -- till this one. It's wrong as stated.

The problem is, IMHO, you badly overstate your case here and therefore it is too easily misinterpretable. In fact, you actually contradict yourself if the other points are compared. In your other points, you've touched on individual and social variability of vocabulary and morphosyntactics, IOW dialects, yet here suddenly you dive for a flat-out holus bolus description of language as only biology. You can't have it both ways.

The linguistic research into creole languages has shown that within 3 generations of speakers, if there is sufficient social support, a basic pidgen will develop into a creole and then into a fully-fledged language with full grammatical structure.

So therefore language is not only owing to a specific biological base, but also to social development and individual creativity (the obligatory Lewis Carroll quote has already been given by someone else).

[Gurdur]

...So it's not a learned skill like, say, playing poker.....
See my above post, and to add to my point:

You totally ignore individual differences in vocabulary size, and these vary hugely. This also makes your statement wrong as it stands.

Language is a partially learnt skill with a specific biological base and biological development along with much social interaction development.

[Piggy]

In your other points, you've touched on individual and social variability of vocabulary and morphosyntactics, IOW dialects, yet here suddenly you dive for a flat-out holus bolus description of language as only biology. You can't have it both ways.
But it is both ways. My mistake was not consistently using the term "acquisition" (rather than "learning"). But in any case, language usage and language acquisition are not the same issue.

Language acquisition is indeed a hard-wired biological process, which requires no instruction. It is not a learned skill. When you cite this...

The linguistic research into creole languages has shown that within 3 generations of speakers, if there is sufficient social support, a basic pidgen will develop into a creole and then into a fully-fledged language with full grammatical structure.

... which is true, you are supporting my position. The reason it takes 3 generations is that each developmental stage is accomplished by the children during the stage of language acquisition. The kids generate the grammar which their parents will never use.

[Gurdur]

But it is both ways. My mistake was not consistently using the term "acquisition" (rather than "learning"). But in any case, language usage and language acquisition are not the same issue.

Language acquisition is indeed a hard-wired biological process, which requires no instruction. It is not a learned skill.
No again.
You can individually acquire yet more "language" on top of what you have already by simply deciding to spend lots of time reading. or deciding to talk to tons of others with whom you would not normally mix. Or especially reading dictionaries. Or deciding to study a second language all by yourself.

The problem is in the imprecision of your terms (such as "language") and the flat-out categorical nature of your statements,
you are supporting my position. ....The kids generate the grammar which their parents will never use.
Thus showing it is not a straight biological process only, since the kids do not have a significantly different biology from their parents, and also thus showing I am not in fact supporting your position.

[Piggy]

You totally ignore individual differences in vocabulary size, and these vary hugely. This also makes your statement wrong as it stands.

Language is a partially learnt skill with a specific biological base and biological development along with much social interaction development.

The issue of vocabulary variation isn't precisely relevant to the issue of whether language acquisition (my apologies for not qualifying that term in post 2) is a "learned skill" or a hard-wired biological process.

Social interaction is indeed required. But that doesn't make it a "learned skill".

The only requirements for language acquisition are (1) a sufficiently healthy body, and (2) exposure to language being used in context.

That's it.

No instruction is needed at all.

The brain taking in language from its environment is a lot like the body taking in water, food, air, and sunlight. The body is pre-programmed to take these inputs and turn them into tissue and energy. Metabolism is not a learned skill. And neither is language acquisition.

That's not to say, as has been mentioned above, that once we acquire the fundamentals of language we can't expand our vocabulary, improve our composition, hone our rhetorical abilities and so forth -- so yes, that's quite correct. That's the usage part.

In fact, I've spent much of my adult life doing those things, and teaching others how to do them.

Perhaps I was overly broad in my statements, but I tried to make it as clear as I could by including the comparisons:

[Myth] 7. Language is a skill we learn, like driving a car or cooking pasta.

Language is not a learned skill, like riding a bike. <snip> If the body is normal, and the environment is sufficiently rich (the kid is exposed to language being used in context), all human children will go through the same stages of linguistic development, albeit at different rates.

The myth is that we "learn" language as children in much the same way that we learn to dress ourselves or do math. And that's just not the case.

I should have clarified 7 by saying "Language acquisition is not a learned skill".

vocabulary-building, rhetorical improvement, compositional skills... sure, there's plain old vanilla learning going on.

But when we're talking about how a kid learns to talk in the first place... that's a whole different story.

[Piggy]

You can individually acquire yet more "language" on top of what you have already by simply deciding to spend lots of time reading. or deciding to talk to tons of others with whom you would not normally mix. Or especially reading dictionaries. Or deciding to study a second language all by yourself.
We don't disagree on this.

the kids do not have a significantly different biology from their parents
Oh, but they do. A kid's brain is very, very different from an adult's brain. Especially when it comes to language.

Children will learn languages being used around them automatically, without any instruction whatsoever, according to pre-programmed developmental rules. Adults will not.

A child who is deprived of exposure to language until after puberty will never acquire the full set of linguistic tools, no matter what s/he does.

The biology is night and day.

[Piggy]

In the case of pidgin -> creole -> language, the adults invent the pidgin. And that's the best they're going to do.

If there's a permanent community using the pidgin, their kids will generate syntactic rules for the creole.

They will not learn them, because no one can teach them to them.

And the syntax their brains generate -- socially, yes -- will follow the constraints of parameter switching within the range of possibilities of the underlying universal grammar which resides in our brains.

Their kids will take it a step farther. And again, it's these kids' brains which are automatically doing this work -- and again, yes, social context is required in the form of a usage environment -- they are not being taught these developments because there is no one to teach them to them.

You may not be agreeing with me, but your examples certainly are.

[Piggy]

The bottom line is, language acquisition is hard-wired. It will happen, as long as the "food" of language is there to nourish it.

Compare that to a learned skill, like playing poker.

Put a kid around poker players, but never explain the game, maybe the kid will learn, maybe not.

But if a kid is exposed to language, you cannot stop that kid from picking it up, even if no one ever offers one bit of correction or instruction.

Adults can learn poker even if they've never seen a pack of cards in their lives.

Kids who are not exposed to language during the "critical period" for language acquisition are doomed. They're never going to get it. They'll never have all the tools.

There are "modules" in the developing brain which are programmed to acquire language, and they'll do it, as long as the brain is healthy and the "food" of language is available. Once these modules have done their task of building the tools, they shut down. But the tools they've built, together with other tools, allow us to learn more vocabulary, become better writers, become more persuasive speakers, and so forth.

[Earthborn]

I should have said "if a child is exposed to language being used in context, you cannot stop him/her from acquiring it."I don't see why this should be true, or how it can be (ethically) tested. I remember that during my childhood when my parents were talking about grown-up stuff (like taxes or something) they might as well have been talking a foreign language. Not only did they use words I did not understand, but they were discussing concepts that had no meaning to me at all. I doubt I would have acquired any language if they spoke to like that all the time.

But parents interact with their children. They talk about things while they show them, speak about action while acting them out, so children know what they mean. I don't think there is any child that ever acquired a language without someone instructing and teaching them. That this instruction is very informal and parents see it as play instead of teaching makes no difference, I think.
A child may (perhaps after a particular period) be able empathise with another person, and therefore be able to learn language from the interaction of other people that does not directly include them, but that too does not mean there is no learning involved. I really fail to see the need for hypothesising any 'hard-wiring' of language.

All it takes is being in an environment where language is being usedAll it takes to learn to ride a bike is an environment where people ride bikes and children are encouraged to do the same. I don't see much of a difference. The only difference is that teaching children to ride bikes is often somewhat more formal teaching, and much of language teaching is very informal to the point where people don't realise they are teaching.

Our brains are specifically designed to do it, and do it extremely well, without any explicit instruction whatsoever.But perhaps a whole lot of 'implicit instruction' ?

Kids who never have their grammar corrected will acquire it just as well as those who do.Really? Where have researchers found these children, and how did they figure out these children never had their grammar corrected?

[Strider1974]

1. Native speakers of a language have an intuitive understanding of how it works.

Perhaps the most pervasive myth. It's odd because folks don't generally assume that because they live in a house, they therefore understand the basics of architecture and construction. Or that because they eat food, they have a sufficient understanding of nutrition. Or that because they live in a world full of matter and energy, they grasp particle physics.

And yet I continually encounter the view that anyone who speaks knows what language is and how it works. When, in fact, we're still unlocking the secrets of how language evolved, what its rules are, and how it's produced and processed in the brain.
I think what people really mean when they say this is that they understand what isn't said. Language is not just about the words but also the cultural references behind those words. To use your example, to live in house and not merely use it as shelter you need to know how to use things like taps, cupboards etc. That is you don't need to know how it works, but you do need to know how to use it.

[Piggy]

Earthborn, there's a great variety of cultural differences when it comes to how kids are raised on this planet, and a lot of the research on the effect of explicit instruction comes from comparing kids raised in different cultures.

It's not a universal for parents to attempt to provide grammar instruction.

But it doesn't matter -- they all acquire language skills just the same.

And in controlled studies where sets of parents either provide instruction or don't, we simply don't see any significant effect on acquisition.

Furthermore, it's consistently shown that kids who have not yet developed the ability to think formally about grammar simply have no idea what parents are doing when they attempt to correct them. First they have to develop the tools -- which their brains are pre-programmed to do -- then they can understand when, for example, mom says "Don't say 'ain't', say 'isn't'".

The cases of kids raised without any exposure to language are very rare, and horrifically tragic.

But what they, together with the other evidence, show is that we do indeed have hard-wired "modules" (that's an abstraction, of course) in our brains which are there for the express purpose of acquiring language. Once they've done their job, they're shut down because the brain doesn't need them anymore, and they're damn expensive to maintain. But the tools they've built allow us to expand vocabulary, etc. through learning.

We do not have any such dedicated modules for learned skills such as riding bikes, playing cards, tying shoes, and such.

Language acquisition is special, and it is much more akin to biologically-based developmental processes like sexual maturation than it is to learned skills such as dancing the hokey pokey.

[Earthborn]

The brain taking in language from its environment is a lot like the body taking in water, food, air, and sunlight.Yes, it is very much like that. The problem with your argument is that the brain (or nervous tissue in general) taking in input from its environment and adjusting itself to it is what biologists and neurologists generally call "learning". Arguing that language acquisition is not "learning" is claiming that the brain does not take in input from its environment to do it, unless (with respect to myth 2) you are using a bizarro world definition of the word "learning".

[Gurdur]

....Oh, but they do. A kid's brain is very, very different from an adult's brain. Especially when it comes to language.
...The biology is night and day.
I believe you missed my point. To reiterate:
creole development means children will develop a richer grammatical structure and greater vocabulary than their parents did with the pidgen.

Since the children differ in no significant way biologically, but generationally the language differs, the difference cannot lie only in biology, but also in social and individual development of the language.

Which brings us back to my main point that you try stating it as if it was all only biology, which it isn't.
I don't see why this should be true,
Studies have been done with children from deprived and isolated past backgrounds. Also, certain neurological genetic syndromes provide windows of research.

[Hokulele]

So I misspoke earlier. I should have said "if a child is exposed to language being used in context, you cannot stop him/her from acquiring it." That may have avoided the confusion. I don't see why this should be true, or how it can be (ethically) tested. I remember that during my childhood when my parents were talking about grown-up stuff (like taxes or something) they might as well have been talking a foreign language. Not only did they use words I did not understand, but they were discussing concepts that had no meaning to me at all. I doubt I would have acquired any language if they spoke to like that all the time.

But parents interact with their children. They talk about things while they show them, speak about action while acting them out, so children know what they mean. I don't think there is any child that ever acquired a language without someone instructing and teaching them. That this instruction is very informal and parents see it as play instead of teaching makes no difference, I think.
A child may (perhaps after a particular period) be able empathise with another person, and therefore be able to learn language from the interaction of other people that does not directly include them, but that too does not mean there is no learning involved. I really fail to see the need for hypothesising any 'hard-wiring' of language.

All it takes to learn to ride a bike is an environment where people ride bikes and children are encouraged to do the same. I don't see much of a difference. The only difference is that teaching children to ride bikes is often somewhat more formal teaching, and much of language teaching is very informal to the point where people don't realise they are teaching.

But perhaps a whole lot of 'implicit instruction' ?

Really? Where have researchers found these children, and how did they figure out these children never had their grammar corrected?


Well, I know anecdotal evidence is worth the paper it is (not) printed on, but when I was growing up, my mother and grandmother would speak to each other in Japanese, but my brother and I were only exposed to English formally in the house (my father did not, and still does not speak Japanese at all). However, I often could understand the gist of what they were talking about, even if I couldn't translate it directly, and later in life when I formally studied Japanese (in college), I needed to learn much of the grammar and vocabulary, but my pronunciation was perfect (for a non-native speaker), and the grammar was much easier for me than some of my fellow students. Just to clarify, in general, I am certainly no whiz at languages (native US English, some French, some Japanese, and a smattering of whatever I have happened to pick up over a life with interesting travel involved).

[Piggy]

I remember that during my childhood when my parents were talking about grown-up stuff (like taxes or something) they might as well have been talking a foreign language. Not only did they use words I did not understand, but they were discussing concepts that had no meaning to me at all. I doubt I would have acquired any language if they spoke to like that all the time.
That's an interesting point, and quite correct.

The linguistic environment has to be meaningful to the kid. If no one is interacting with the kid, acquisition is thwarted. (The consensus is that if you isolated a child from human contact, but put a radio or TV in the room, the kid would not acquire language.)

However, it would be very difficult to create an environment in which there was no adult talk about objects and actions of interest to a child. (Although, sadly, we may be able to check some hypotheses soon if any of the horror stories I've heard about some Russian orphanages are true.)

If you feed a kid with a spoon, he's watching when you're handling spoons, even if you're not feeding him, and he's listening. If he has siblings, he's hearing what you say to them. If you discuss his diaper with your spouse while changing him, he's hearing that. If your mom drops by and you tell her about his cough, that gets his attention, too.

We have evolved in social groups. Our brains are built on the assumption that we'll grow up in them.

[Piggy]

Yes, it is very much like that. The problem with your argument is that the brain (or nervous tissue in general) taking in input from its environment and adjusting itself to it is what biologists and neurologists generally call "learning". Arguing that language acquisition is not "learning" is claiming that the brain does not take in input from its environment to do it, unless (with respect to myth 2) you are using a bizarro world definition of the word "learning".

Certainly, in everyday parlance, we talk of learning to speak. In fact, as you've seen, I did so at the top of the thread.

What I'm saying (and what I've been taking the time to clarify in recent posts) is that language acquisition is not "a learned skill like riding a bike" (which is something more specific than claiming it is not appropriate to use the term "learning" at all with respect to language acquisition, so my apologies for making that implication -- mea culpa). And it's not. It's different. Our brains are pre-programmed to do it. It's not mere trial and error, and it's not response to instruction.

I'm fine with phrases like "learning to speak" or "a child learning its first language". But here, I've tried to make my language a little more precise than it was at the start.

My point is, still, that language acquisition is not "a learned skill like riding a bike". It's qualitatively different. It's a highly specific, biologically-based developmental function of the brain, which cannot be said of bike riding or other "learned skills".

[wunky]

Piggy
What do you do for a living?
I ask because I deal with language pedagogues and liguistic experts- both academic and government on a daily basis and I cringe to think how some of them- from both disciplines would take this thread.
Do you have a theory if language can not be taught how one is to learn a language?
I agree with the in context approach, but most funding is not going that direction- at least not public funding. Thank ED for Freeman and the like.
What about language folks at MLA, CAL, the LRCs, NSA, ILI, ACTFL, JNCL, NVTC, ODNI they each have something to say about this- they are not even in accord with each other some times.
If you are on the east coast there is an event in June in DC that you may want to attend. PM me for details

[Earthborn]

there's a great variety of cultural differences when it comes to how kids are raised on this planet, and a lot of the research on the effect of explicit instruction comes from comparing kids raised in different cultures.Don't equate getting explicit instruction with learning. It makes no sense at all. Futhermore, it is interesting that you mention research of different cultures. That is done by cultural anthropologists who define "culture" as "the totality of learnt human behaviour". They include language in that. If language was something that is not learnt, does that mean cultural anthropologists should not study it?

It's not a universal for parents to attempt to provide grammar instruction.Not explicitly and not formally, I guess. But I think implicitely and informally they do, and even if they don't children will probably just learn to imitate the language use of others.

And in controlled studies where sets of parents either provide instruction or don't, we simply don't see any significant effect on acquisition.It would help if you provide a link to such research, or even if you gave a few more details on what sort of experiments were done.

kids who have not yet developed the ability to think formally about grammar simply have no idea what parents are doing when they attempt to correct them. First they have to develop the tools -- which their brains are pre-programmed to doIt sounds to me more like children learn to understand what parents are doing when they are corrected, because they are corrected. In other words, they develop those tools because they are often corrected. I wonder whether such research tried to exclude that possibility.

But what they, together with the other evidence, show is that we do indeed have hard-wired "modules" (that's an abstraction, of course) in our brains which are there for the express purpose of acquiring language.How exactly do they show that?

[Jackalgirl]

I'd have to disagree with you somewhat on both counts.

All languages are equally easy to learn if you're born into a culture that uses them. But some languages are indeed harder to learn, for different people, as second (or later) languages. For me, for example, it's easier to learn Spanish than to learn a click language, or a tonal language, or a declined language.

For many non-native speakers, English is very challenging, because it's a hybrid language with non-phonetic spelling and extensive irregular forms. Chinese nationals I've tutored get extremely frustrated at the lack of regularity in English spelling, pronunciation, and syntax, for example.

However, I'd say that there is a related myth, and that is:

8. Some languages are less grammatical than others.

In fact, all languages have grammar and syntax. All languages are complex. And what's fascinating about newly developed languages (such as those arising from pidgins, or those developed by isolated deaf populations) is that it doesn't take long for standard syntax to arise organically.

On the second point, as a general rule, it does indeed become more difficult to learn a new language as we age.

I totally agree. The Defense Language Institute puts out a test, called the "Defense Language Aptitude Battery". One's score on the test determines which language programs one is elegible to enter. Mind you, this is a test of English-speakers, so the DLI's criteria for which languages are "harder" than others are based on those languages' relationship to English. Italian and Spanish, for example, require the lowest score for elegibility (80). They're closely related to English, so they're easier for English speakers to learn. Chinese (I haven't yet found out which "Chinese" they're talking about) and Arabic are level 4 -- requiring a score of 100 to be eligible for their programs. I think that I would have a problem with the tonality of Chinese too, although I think I'd get used to it in an immersion environment -- but I imagine it would take me a lot longer to become fluent than it did for me to become fluent in German (1 year classroom, 7 months immersion) because German is related to English, therefore there were commonalities that I could use as memory aids, whereas Chinese is not and requires more work.

As for the "some languages are more grammatical than others"; I wonder if what the supporters of that myth really mean is that "some languages have more grammatical forms than others". Like, for example, the three genders of German, German's multiple cases, and all of the attendant different forms of articles for those nouns depending on gender and case. Latin is pretty ferocious in this regard, too. It's not that the language has "more grammar", it's just that some languages are more complex than others in this regard -- I think there's a payoff, though: in English, we pay for the lack of multiple cases by a fixed word order, which in turn requires a much, much higher vocabulary in order to express nuances. I don't have any source for that -- it's just a suspicion of mine.

I also think that the inherent complexity of "natural" languages -- and how difficult they can be for speakers of languages from completely different language families to earn -- is one of the reasons for "artificial" languages like Esperanto (http://www.lernu.net). Esperanto is still a language based on European language families, but its grammar is 'simplified' in that there is generally one rule for each type of grammar structure, making it much easier to learn than most "natural" languages, even for speakers of languages not related to European language families. (Of course, this does not address the idea that certain grammatical structures present in other languages might be entirely missing from Esperanto).

[Piggy]

Since the children differ in no significant way biologically, but generationally the language differs, the difference cannot lie only in biology, but also in social and individual development of the language.

Which brings us back to my main point that you try stating it as if it was all only biology, which it isn't.

I have to repeat that the biological differences in the brains of kids and adults are highly significant. I don't see how you can argue otherwise. But no matter, let's move on to the important point....

I think I've been clear from the beginning that language is necessarily social, and that a language-rich environment is required for first language acquisition.

I have never said that a kid's brain will generate language on its own, the way a kid's body grows hair.

So no, I'm not saying it's "only" biology. What I am saying, however, is that the biology of language acquisition is qualitatively different from the biology of, say, learning to tie a shoe.

Learning to tie a shoe is a learned skill which we acquire by instruction and trial and error, which we can learn at any time of our lives once we have the motor skills, and which does not require any specialized shoe-tying functions in the brain but rather draws on more generalized abilities such as hand-eye coordination and mental manipulation of shapes.

Acquiring language skills, however, is something our brains are specifically programmed to do within an early critical period, and which they will do according to an underlying set of rules and stages hard-wired in the brain regardless of (or even in spite of) instruction. And if we miss that critical period we will never -- unlike shoe-tying, bike-riding, poker-playing, or square dancing -- be able to build the tools which allow us be fully verbal.

[Mercutio]

Piggy, it appears that you limit "learning" to explicit operant shaping of verbal behavior. Far more than that is encompassed within learning, though--we are taught to imitate (this said without claim one way or another about any hard-wired ability to imitate; whether or not hard-wiring exists, it is still the case that we are taught to imitate), and we are taught to follow rules. In both cases, imitation and rule-following are operant classes which contribute to the learning of verbal behavior (and, in turn, are facilitated themselves by the learning of verbal behavior).

Earthborn's comment about "implicit instruction" is very important. If we only count explicit reinforcement for specifics of (say) grammar, then we ignore A) modeling, B) rule-teaching, C) prompting, and fading of prompts, and D) probably some more I am forgetting--like schedule effects, for instance.

"Explicit instruction" =/= "learning". "Explicit instruction" is a subset of learning. Language acquisition may be special, but "more than explicit instruction" is not enough. Until a linguist comes along who actually understands learning theory, there will be confusion.

[Mercutio]

Piggy... since my last recommendation was a bit dated...

From last year, in the journal "Applied Linguistics"(2006, vol 27-3, pp. 519-526). (Sorry, I have no link this time--but I get the feeling you have decent library access.) "Audiolingual Method and Behaviorism: From Misunderstanding To Myth"

Abstract:This article contends that the modern descendant of B. F. Skinner's experimental analysis of behavior, 'behavior analysis,' and as well his 1957 masterwork Verbal Behavior, have rarely if ever been seriously contemplated by applied linguists for possible contributions to the field. Rather, a pat literature of dismissal has developed that justifies itself on (a) a fictitious link between the audiolingual method and undifferentiated behaviorism, and/or (b) a demonstrably erroneous notion that operant psychology is too simplistic to effectively take up language issues. In reality, behavior analysis is alive, well, and making significant contributions in applied language settings, but not typically in the second language area.

[Piggy]

What do you do for a living?
Well, I've done a lot of jobs in my day, but I have a PhD in English and I spent several years teaching composition, American lit, and creative writing (and tutoring Spanish on the side) before moving over to the public service branch of the university, where my duties involved a wide variety of tasks, including proofing and editing documents such as contracts and statewide street naming and numbering guidelines, writing public information materials and annual reports, developing text for the Web site, creating trade show displays, providing copy for speeches by deans and public officials -- a real grab bag.

When it turned out there was some unsavory activity going on in my department (and that my director intended not to stop it) I bugged out and picked up another master's degree from the business school. Then spent a few months teaching test-taking skills to college students who were studying for the GRE and LSAT (and going back to my old standby, construction work, for extra income) before landing my current job.

I'd rather not give details about my current life -- who I work for and what my job title is -- but my primary duties, aside from project management, involve a lot of surveys, a lot of reading and analyzing of public claims in the health and consumer field, and a lot of testing of reader response to variations in language, plus writing advertisements (tho I don't as much of that as I used to). It's a strange combination of tasks, but I have an unusual set of skills, and the group I work for does not have a typical organizational structure.

I still write poetry, and I also write lyrics (and some songs) for friends of mine in the nearby music mecca, as well as some promotional materials now.

[Piggy]

Don't equate getting explicit instruction with learning. It makes no sense at all. Futhermore, it is interesting that you mention research of different cultures. That is done by cultural anthropologists who define "culture" as "the totality of learnt human behaviour". They include language in that. If language was something that is not learnt, does that mean cultural anthropologists should not study it?

You've just totally lost me there. I have no opinion about what cultural anthropologists should or shouldn't study. I've explained what I mean when I say that first language acquisition is qualitatively different from learned skills like tying a shoe. I won't be engaging in any narrow discussions of the applicability of the word "learn".

[Piggy]

It would help if you provide a link to such research, or even if you gave a few more details on what sort of experiments were done.

I was hoping drkitten would beat me to it. If I'm not mistaken, he's still active in the field and will have much more at hand than I do. But I'll see what I can dig up in my old notes and online (just not tonight -- it's nearly midnight).

[Jeff Corey]

Merc,
One of the not so cunning linguists was Chomsky, whose review of "Verbal Behavior" poisoned the well, so to speak. When I got to his diatribe about Skinner's S-R approach, I quit reading. What a monstrous academic fraud. Reviewed a book he never read. What kind of peer review went into that? A bunch of education grad students.
Probably thought an "autoclitic" referred to female masturbation.

[Piggy]

Piggy, it appears that you limit "learning" to explicit operant shaping of verbal behavior.
Ok, let me clarify this again....

I have no problem with speaking of "learning to speak" or a kid "learning its first language".

No problem.

What I'm saying (again) is that first language is acquisition is not "a learned skill like tying a shoe" (or riding a bike, or playing poker, or square dancing). The whole phrase is important -- do not stop at "learned" and ignore the rest. It's not a skill in the way that those are, and we don't learn to speak our first language(s) in the way we learn to do these kinds of things.

I'm not (repeat NOT) saying that it's improper ever to use the word "learn" with respect to first language acquisition.

I have no interest in limiting how the word "learn" may be used.

If this issue crops up again, I'm just going to refer people back to this post.

[Mobyseven]

The myth I'm attacking here is the attitude that "I know how to speak English; I know what the rules are", when what the person actually knows are the formal rules of the standard dialect which they were taught in English class.


No English class I ever attended. In fact there is a distinct move away from teaching the rules of the language.

I learnt the rules of English by studying Japanese, and then later on, linguistics.

[Piggy]

One of the not so cunning linguists was Chomsky, whose review of "Verbal Behavior" poisoned the well, so to speak. When I got to his diatribe about Skinner's S-R approach, I quit reading. What a monstrous academic fraud. Reviewed a book he never read. What kind of peer review went into that? A bunch of education grad students.
Chomsky had no training in linguistics. And although he had some significant insights which led to important advances in the field, his lack of education in the subject shows.

Which is why I believe only a selection of Chomsky's ideas should be taught in language courses, preferably early on, after which point the class can move on to the current brain research, field studies, and theoretical models.

But there's definitely a baby in that bathwater. The problem is, there so much f*****g bathwater.

[Jeff Corey]

Ok, let me clarify this again....

I have no problem with speaking of "learning to speak" or a kid "learning its first language".

No problem.

What I'm saying (again) is that first language is acquisition is not "a learned skill like tying a shoe" (or riding a bike, or playing poker, or square dancing). The whole phrase is important -- do not stop at "learned" and ignore the rest. It's not a skill in the way that those are, and we don't learn to speak our first language(s) in the way we learn to do these kinds of things.

I'm not (repeat NOT) saying that it's improper ever to use the word "learn" with respect to first language acquisition.

I have no interest in limiting how the word "learn" may be used.

If this issue crops up again, I'm just going to refer people back to this post.
How do you know it's different? It's a behavior. It can be shaped. I have trained difficult kids (autistic, developmentally disabled) and "normals". The skills behavior analysts learn are applicable to all these areas.

[Mercutio]

Ok, let me clarify this again....

I have no problem with speaking of "learning to speak" or a kid "learning its first language".

No problem.

What I'm saying (again) is that first language is acquisition is not "a learned skill like tying a shoe" (or riding a bike, or playing poker, or square dancing). The whole phrase is important -- do not stop at "learned" and ignore the rest. It's not a skill in the way that those are, and we don't learn to speak our first language(s) in the way we learn to do these kinds of things.

I'm not (repeat NOT) saying that it's improper ever to use the word "learn" with respect to first language acquisition.

I have no interest in limiting how the word "learn" may be used.

If this issue crops up again, I'm just going to refer people back to this post.If you do that, you won't solve anything. What are the differences? Did you choose those examples at random, or is there actual experimental evidence? Poker learning, for example, could be imitative, rule-governed, shaped... is your claim that language learning is different from this a simple assertion on your part, or has it been experimentally examined?

This may sound nit-picky, but your post does not make it clear whether the difference is quantitative or qualitative, theoretical or empirical... I absolutely do see that you say not "a learned skill like tying a shoe", but you do not say how it is different. Learning to tie a shoe is more likely to be imitative and rule-governed than simple shaping, so even shoe-tying is not a great example of a simple learned behavior.

Sorry, Piggy--I am not meaning to be Merc-headed, here. I do mean to point out that your simple distinction is not at all simple to those in the learning community. Refering them to what you said won't help, because what you said is not nearly specific enough. Especially since we have no real idea how thorough your grounding is in behavioral vocabulary.

[Jeff Corey]

I guess we are saying the same thing, Merc.

[Piggy]

In fact there is a distinct move away from teaching the rules of the language.

I think by "rules of the language" you mean specifically the rules of the standard dialect, no?

Personally, I'm all in favor of formal instruction in the rules of "standard English" for middle- and high-school students. It's a skill they need to know.

(And yes, everybody, I did say "skill" -- by this point, we've already acquired our linguistic toolset, and mastering the standard written dialect is indeed a learned skill.)

When I first started teaching college-level English, I was floored by what many of these kids didn't know. Probably more than half of them were totally unprepared to write to a college standard, because they didn't know enough about formal grammar to begin to make the changes they needed to make.

You can't follow formal comma placement rules, for example, if you don't know the difference between a phrase and a clause, much less a dependent and independent clause.

A lot of the kids I taught had a hard time telling adverbs from adjectives.

Not teaching them the rules of standard writing was a tremendous disservice on the part of their high-schools.

[Piggy]

How do you know it's different?

I've already explained that.

[Jeff Corey]

Who teaches the teachers how to teach? Education departments. But who teaches the teachers what to teach?

[Mercutio]

I've already explained that.

Have you? I think that there is a problem here. With all due respect, I think it possible that it is because you have an incomplete understanding of learning. I may be wrong (and it is late), but it seems to me that you are saying "it is not A, therefore it is Z" with regard to
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Whereas learning theorists both 1) divide A up into categories, and 2) include part of what you call Z into those categories (in this case, caps represent what you called A, and lowercase is what you called Z):
AAAAAAaaBBBBBbbbBBCcccCDDDddDEEeeEEEFfF

As you can see, telling me or Corey that you have "already explained that" may well mean a different thing for you than for us.

[Piggy]

Mercutio, I know you reach for behaviorism as the explanatory model for any and every thing, but in this case it's just shoehorning.

There is no evidence of a critical period for acquiring the abilities which enable one to play poker, during which explicit instruction is irrelevant to the rate of acquisition, and after which -- if exposure to poker has been denied -- those abilities cannot be fully acquired.

There is no evidence that children's brains are universally pre-disposed to attend to card-playing in their environment, that they will automatically learn to play the card game that is being played around them, and that they thereby acquire a specialized set of mental tools which enable them to learn other card games.

The very idea is absurd. Yet this is what happens with language.

What's going on in the brain during first language acquisition in children is qualitatively different from what's going in the brain when they learn to dress themselves.

The human brain is specifically wired to acquire language during our very early years. It is an integral and unique component of brain development. This is not true of arbitrary skills such as riding a bike, playing cards, or dancing the hokey-pokey. That's the distinction I'm making here.

That's what I'm saying, and I'm getting tired of clarifying it.

If you want to discuss learning theory in general, or behaviorism, start a new thread.

[Piggy]

I think it possible that it is because you have an incomplete understanding of learning.

No, it's because this thread is not about the general topic of learning.

I've explained my point over and over. Yet you keep coming back to what you'd like to discuss instead.

Start your own thread.

[Piggy]

Mercutio, to clarify further, and for the last time, I am not saying that it's impossible that this or that mode of learning is involved at all in language acquisition.

I am saying (again, and for the last time, I hope) that the acquisition of linguistic ability is a special case. It's a specific developmental task that our brains are hard-wired to perform during an early critical period, after which time the programs which have built the tools, in the process of acquiring the first language, largely shut down.

This distinguishes the acquisition of linguistic ability, and first language, qualitatively from the acquisition of arbitrary learned skills such as playing sports and solving math problems.

To borrow a phrase from Pinker, language acquisition is "instinctive" in a way that learning these other skills is not.

That's what I'm saying, and that's all I'm saying.

[Mercutio]

Mercutio, I know you reach for behaviorism as the explanatory model for any and every thing, but in this case it's just shoehorning.

Actually, I am continually on the hunt for something that cannot be explained that way. It would make my career. Sadly, I keep coming up empty.

Seriously--this (snipped) post was more complete than the ones I was responding to. Perhaps it is my fault that I did not see a more complete explanation earlier. I did not come here looking to disagree with you--your OP, I thought, was quite consistent with what I thought to be true. To the extent that I am arguing against things you do not say, I apologize. But... no behaviorist (that I know of) has a problem with sensitive or critical periods; it seems that what you are saying here is entirely consistent with behaviorism, except that you seem to claim that it is not the same sort of learning... which puzzles me. I cannot help but think it is mostly a vocabulary problem. Behaviorists like Corey and me, we often think it must be a misunderstanding...

[Jeff Corey]

No, it's because this thread is not about the general topic of learning.

I've explained my point over and over. Yet you keep coming back to what you'd like to discuss instead.

Start your own thread.
I don't think so. This has a lot to do with your utter ignorance of what learning is, how it works and how behaviorists have used their hard won knowledge to explain how language is acquired. So we will continue to question the "facts" presented in the OP.
Any problem with that?

[Jeff Corey]

7. Language is a skill we learn, like driving a car or cooking pasta.

Language is not a learned skill, like riding a bike. It is a hard-wired, biologically determined developmental process, like sexual maturation.

In the case of the latter, if the body is normal, and the environment is sufficiently rich (nutrition, sunlight, physical activity), all human children will go through the same stages of sexual development, albeit at different rates.

Similarly, if the body is normal, and the environment is sufficiently rich (the kid is exposed to language being used in context), all human children will go through the same stages of linguistic development, albeit at different rates.

A kid is not going to learn to drive by riding in a car or watching traffic.

But if a kid is exposed to language, you can't stop him/her from learning it.

Even their "errors" follow a general pattern, and attempting to correct these errors has little or no effect on how quickly they'll learn the right phrasing. A kid will say "goed" when s/he grasps the connection between -ed and past tense, and will say "went" when s/he moves beyond that stage of overgeneralization.

It's not learning, it's biology.
For example. Opinion. no evidence. Claus, gimme a hand here.

[Mobyseven]

I think by "rules of the language" you mean specifically the rules of the standard dialect, no?

Personally, I'm all in favor of formal instruction in the rules of "standard English" for middle- and high-school students. It's a skill they need to know.

(And yes, everybody, I did say "skill" -- by this point, we've already acquired our linguistic toolset, and mastering the standard written dialect is indeed a learned skill.)

When I first started teaching college-level English, I was floored by what many of these kids didn't know. Probably more than half of them were totally unprepared to write to a college standard, because they didn't know enough about formal grammar to begin to make the changes they needed to make.

You can't follow formal comma placement rules, for example, if you don't know the difference between a phrase and a clause, much less a dependent and independent clause.

A lot of the kids I taught had a hard time telling adverbs from adjectives.

Not teaching them the rules of standard writing was a tremendous disservice on the part of their high-schools.

And I entirely agree with you. I myself have encountered many people who fit the description you put forward in your post.

I was merely describing my experience with the Victorian education system, I was in no way promoting it...I find it horrible that students are completing secondary education without knowing even the most basic rules that govern the language they speak.

To clarify, yes I was talking about the rules of the standard dialect - the dialect most likely to be understood and used in formal situations.

Also, I am aware I began this post with a conjunction. Rules were, of course, made to be broken...you just have to know the rules first!

[Gurdur]

Chomsky had no training in linguistics. And although he had some significant insights which led to important advances in the field, his lack of education in the subject shows.
Since his PhD was in linguistics, how the hell can you flat-out claim he had "no training in linguistics"?

Weird.

[Gurdur]

Actually, I am continually on the hunt for something that cannot be explained that way.
Skinner's "black box".

BTW, behaviourism and its successors don't actually explain much anything once you get into intent and choice territory; behaviourism and its successors either deny the area or avoid it.

[Gurdur]

..There is no evidence of a critical period for acquiring the abilities which enable one to play poker, during which explicit instruction is irrelevant to the rate of acquisition, and after which -- if exposure to poker has been denied -- those abilities cannot be fully acquired.

There is no evidence that children's brains are universally pre-disposed to attend to card-playing in their environment, that they will automatically learn to play the card game that is being played around them, and that they thereby acquire a specialized set of mental tools which enable them to learn other card games.

The very idea is absurd. Yet this is what happens with language.
This is a fair enough summation, and the evidence bears it out.

[Gurdur]

Merc,
One of the not so cunning linguists was Chomsky, whose review of "Verbal Behavior" poisoned the well, so to speak. When I got to his diatribe about Skinner's S-R approach, I quit reading. What a monstrous academic fraud. Reviewed a book he never read. What kind of peer review went into that? A bunch of education grad students.
Probably thought an "autoclitic" referred to female masturbation.
This amounts to a lot of name-calling but no substance. It wasn't only Chomsky to critique behavioiurism, in fact a lot did; and it led to behaviourism being overtaken by other schools as well as successors to behaviourism.

[Ichneumonwasp]

Um, it's probably a very bad idea for me to stick my feet in here, but perhaps......

It seems to me that you guys are quibbling over degrees of emphasis and not completely hearing what the other side is saying. Perhaps Piggy initially put a little too much emphasis on nativism and not enough on learning, but I think everyone can agree that both nature and nurture are vitally important to language acquisition.

Piggy's point really is not that nativism is it, that all language acquisition rests on the nature side, but that language acquisition is a little different from other nature-nurture issues. Language acquisition does have characteristics that differ from many other types of learning situations -- the critical period, for instance; and the fact that modelling is the prime initial means for most speakers to learn language. There are, of course, exceptions in which more formal education will be necessary -- in the neurologically devastated. I think Piggy is only trying to highlight that issue -- the difference in the native biology of language acquisition compared to other types of learning (which admittedly use the same learning processes as language acquisition when it comes to the learning itself) -- rather than holding that there is no learning to the process. I think his point is not that the learning side differs all that much but that the nativism side differs so that the learning of language has a different character. It occurs much more "naturally" -- which is a very imprecise way of stating things, but I hope gets the point across.

Categorical statements on either side of the nature-nurture divide will almost always be wrong regarding human behavior. There are exceptions even here, but for the most part I find it silly to make such distinctions really. Our genes themselves work within networks of protein expression (within a particular environment) and outside environmental influences cannot be completely separated from this process. For something as complex as language we can never say "all biology" or "all learning". We can quibble about the relative contributions of each, but I don't see any way of parsing out the relative contributions very easily short of creating a new cadre of Kasper Hausers.

[Earthborn]

What I am saying, however, is that the biology of language acquisition is qualitatively different from the biology of, say, learning to tie a shoe.You keep saying that, but you don't provide much evidence that it is true. I see the difference more as quantitative; language is much more complex, but it is taught mostly informally. Tying shoelaces is something that parents need to teach their children more explicitely because parents otherwise they will not learn to do it because it is not obvious to them what benefit they will have from learning it; they get their shoelaces tied anyway. Children are motivated to learn a language, because it is an effective means of getting what they want.

You could argue (and I guess that's what you are doing) is that "learning a language" is similar in some ways as the development of a child's sight, which is not considered a learning process by the general public (even though it is). The similarities between these things are the mindboggleing complexity of it, the incredible speed at which it occurs and perhaps the difficulty of doing the same thing during adulthood. But even with eyesight there doesn't appear to be any "hard-wiring" or "pre-programming". In people who are born blind the visual cortex does not lie dormant but perfectly "hard-wired", but instead they have significantly "re-wired" brains so that their visual cortex is used to process other sensory data. This can also happen to some degree to the brains of people who become blind later in life.

If language is somehow different that it does require fixed hard-wired structures in the brain, it would highly surprise me.

Your constant repeating that "language acquisition is different" is very to similar to (if you'll excuse the analogy) Intelligent Design theorists claiming that some things just can't have evolved and must have been designed. They don't explain very well how one is supposed to distinguish between something that is designed and something that is evolved, and neither do you explain how one is supposed to distinguish between a "hard-wired, biologically determined developmental process in an environment sufficiently rich in language input" and a learning process.

I'm not (repeat NOT) saying that it's improper ever to use the word "learn" with respect to first language acquisition.So when you said "Language is not a learned skill" you were not actually arguing that 'language as a learned skill' is a myth?

Mercutio, I know you reach for behaviorism as the explanatory model for any and every thing, but in this case it's just shoehorning.The way I understand it (and Mercutio, correct me if I'm wrong) behaviorism is more of a research model than it is an explanatory model. I can certainly imagine situations where using its methods are inappropriate, such as the study of natural behaviour in the wild. But I don't think there are any aspects that cannot in principle be studied with behaviourist methods.

There is no evidence that children's brains are universally pre-disposed to attend to card-playing in their environment, that they will automatically learn to play the card game that is being played around them, and that they thereby acquire a specialized set of mental tools which enable them to learn other card games.

The very idea is absurd.Really, is it? Are there any cultures that do not have card games or very similar games - involving numbered items and chance? I think you'll have great difficulty finding such cultures. And I have heard people argue that mathematics is some 'hard-wired' skill that 'doesn't require learning' that I have to conclude that not everyone agrees that "the very idea is absurd".

[Piggy]

You keep saying that, but you don't provide much evidence that it is true.
I have provided ample explanation why this is true. However -- as I've already said -- I haven't provided the documentation, as everybody knows. As I've already pointed out, I sold off my books a few years ago, and it's going to take a little time for me to dig out the notes and find some online cites. Please be patient and give me time to do this before restating the same criticism.

[Piggy]

Children are motivated to learn a language, because it is an effective means of getting what they want.
Newborns and infants attend to language instinctively and begin the process of differentiating among phonemes (I'll look for the attention studies) before they're getting anything via language -- because they don't have it yet. They're doing this before they know what language is, or what it means, before it's associated with getting anything.

They do it instinctively, because their brains are wired to do it, not because they have any comprehension of what it is, or what they will eventually be able to do with it.

[Ichneumonwasp]

I see the difference more as quantitative; language is much more complex, but it is taught mostly informally. Tying shoelaces is something that parents need to teach their children more explicitely because parents otherwise they will not learn to do it because it is not obvious to them what benefit they will have from learning it; they get their shoelaces tied anyway.

I basically agree with the qualitative-quantitative distinction, but there is something a bit different about language acquisition, and the critical period is evidence of this.

Perhaps we are simply discussing different types of learning situations? While tying a shoe occurs in a social environment it is not precisely a social activity. It is more a physical activity having some social impact -- we cannot draw a hard and fast distinction between the social and non-social realms, though.

Language acquisition, like most other relatively "pure social" activities, is not learned through formal instruction, for the most part. The same is true regarding our ability to understand other social cues, such as smiling, etc. Some of this non-verbal communication is hard-wired, but other aspects depend on cultural context that is learned through various means generally not involving formal instruction.

Now, there are, of course, other "purely social" type activities that do require some degree of formal instruction -- such as table manners -- so the distinctions cannot be strict.

Does anyone know about the acquisistion of sign language? Does that occur without formal instruction? Perhaps the distinctions we are making here have more to do with the brain systems involved -- motor skills involving the body as a whole (which require more formal instruction) vs motor systems linked directly to hearing, etc. -- than to any strict distinction in learning type?

One of the interesting issues to investigate -- though we never could -- is whether or not there is a "critical period" for learning non-verbal aspects of language, prosody. We have analagous non-dominant Wernicke's areas that "comprehend" these non-verbal aspects of language. I wonder if there is a critical period for picking this up? We could never do the experiment, of course. That would require us to expose a child to language with no emotional prosodic content and see if prosody can be learned later.

ETA

Well, forget that idea. Apparently sign language is acquired in much the same way as spoken language sign language acquisition (http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~meier/meierlab/abstracts/index.html#Cheek,%20Cormier,%20Meier) for references, if anyone wants to look at the papers themselves.

Brain plasticity is grand, is it not? Later acquisition of sign language requires much more formal training, like the acquisition of shoe tying, etc. Perhaps we could acquire many other motor skills more easily if exposed to them at particular ages? Who knows? Like most everything in the nature-nurture debate, strict distinctions are a problem.

ETA ETA

Or, perhaps, this can all be related to the Jamesian idea of 'instinct'. William James proposed that we have not fewer but more instincts than other creatures. Language acquisition, perhaps, appears to be 'natural' because it consists of a small number os 'instincts' that are designed to function together, language being so very important to our social lives, hence our survival. But driving a car is not an instinctual activity. It consists of us pairing other types of motor and sensory activities that are instinctual and are not normally paired -- hand eye coordination, motor paradigms, etc. I'm not saying that all particular movements are instinctual but that movement itself is.

[Earthborn]

I have provided ample explanation why this is true.I don't think you have.

[Piggy]

neither do you explain how one is supposed to distinguish between a "hard-wired, biologically determined developmental process in an environment sufficiently rich in language input" and a learning process.

First, I'll clarify (again) that the language of post #2 was overly broad and imprecise (as was pointed out, conceded, and corrected several posts ago). The "it's biology, not learning" line especially was terribly sloppy in that it attempted to draw an absolute distinction which is simply not tenable.

Ok, on to how to distinguish between brain activity that we could call "hard-wired" or "instinctive" -- in other words, which appears to have specialized, dedicated neurology tasked with it -- and arbitrary learning tasks which make use only of generalized skills -- such as hand-eye coordination, spatial modeling, and so forth -- and do not appear to require any specialized, dedicated neurology.

The differences I've already touched on in this thread are:

1. Universality: In short, all kids do it, starting when they're infants, way too young to know what they're doing or receive concrete reinforcement for it. The stages of first language acquisition follow a general developmental pattern in all cultures. All grammars, even those developed in isolation -- such as the grammars of the children of pidgin speakers, or among populations of deaf children -- are not arbitrary, but fall within a set range of parameter selections which may be called "universal grammar".

2. Reflexivity: All infants attend instinctively to language and begin very early to distinguish among significant and insignificant sounds, long before they receive any benefit from doing so because their parents are not even aware that they are doing it.

3. Automaticity: All ba