How children pick up a language: Review of Wolfe (Humans)

by David Turell , Wednesday, October 12, 2016, 18:12 (2962 days ago) @ David Turell

Another review disagreeing with Wolfe's criticism of Chomsky:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2108618-the-electric-kool-aid-language-test/

"Wolfe’s second hero, Everett, enters in 2005, with an article that delivers “OOOF! – right into the solar plexus!” for the Chomsky tribe.

"Many decades earlier, a brilliant young Chomsky had knocked big holes through B. F. Skinner’s behaviourist psychology and argued that children pick up language so effortlessly from the bits of conversation they hear around them that the underlying rules of all languages must already be stored inside their brains, waiting to be activated by experience. For him, language is an instinct, and with Chomsky’s ascendancy, the focus shifted to the search for its universal grammar.

"Everett’s dramatic claim is that the language of the Pirahã does not fit universal grammar but fits their unique culture. The implication is that language is not an instinct, but a cultural invention shaped by evolution.

"The challenge is big and the response ugly, with few in Wolfe’s tale ready for another paradigm shift. Everett is attacked as an “out-and-out liar” by a Chomsky disciples, and Chomsky calls him “a charlatan”. A massive criticism of his work is written. Other researchers visit the Pirahã to try to prove him wrong.

"But Everett finds the media willing to listen (Wolfe quotes at length from a New Scientist interview) and writes his bestselling book, which turns him into a folk hero.

"It is a dramatic fable, but at the end of the book we have not reached a real ending. Everett’s work is not enough to convince linguistics researchers, as Wolfe might wish, that they had “wasted half a century by subscribing to Chomsky’s doctrine of Universal Grammar”. But Everett is surely right in thinking that language is not going to be explained by the study of grammar alone.

"We need to look at how humans evolved cooperative cultures in which effective communication was at a premium, and at “theory of mind”, which gives humans knowledge of the intentions of others. We need to understand the appearance of symbolic thought, and the hierarchical and recursive structuring of complex actions such as toolmaking. We need to ask how language “means” something, which grammar alone does not give, and how culture co-evolves with language so that we might see how an unstructured set of words slowly acquires deeper grammatical complexity. All these and many more are rich research areas alongside the continuing search for a universal grammar.

"There is far more to language than Wolfe can handle in this short book, and growing excitement ahead. Everett himself has two new books in the works that will provide his own take on culture, symbolism and the appearance of language.

"If I had to make a bet, after the storms pass, we’ll see it end in a grand new synthesis that might cast quarrelsome academics in a better light than Wolfe allows."

Comment: This review fits in with our discussion of the new large brain in sapiens. Look carefully at the 'needs' paragraph just above. All of the needed acculturation was aided by open areas in the brain to be plastically developed, involving muscle control of the tongue, lips and lungs, and development of speech, hearing and visual areas for reading, writing and listening. Infants do this easily, absorbing like sponges. They can learn two or three at once and easily distinguish between them, research has shown. Why does this become more difficult after age 8 or so?