How children pick up a language: new comment (Humans)

by David Turell , Sunday, March 05, 2017, 00:09 (2819 days ago) @ David Turell

This author agrees with Chomsky:

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/kingdom-of-speech-everett-is-wrong-ab...

"Noel Rude, a specialist in native American languages,wrote to offer some thoughts on Tom Wolfe’s takedown of Noam Chomsky’s language theories in The Kingdom of Speech. Chomsky’s theories dominated linguistics for decades. His progressive politics, which were, strictly speaking, irrelevant to his work are often considered to play a role in his prominence.

"Along the way, he clashed with linguist Daniel Everett who had, with an inexcusable lack of political correctness, found an apparent exception to Chomsky’s theories in a remote Brazilian language, Piraha.

"Wolfe chronicles the conflict from both sides, making clear that current theories about the origin of human language are not useful.
Here is the perspective of Noel Rude, an ID-friendly linguist (a specialist in native American languages):

***

"One of the impressions, I’m afraid, that Wolfe’s book might leave is that Everett is right about language. Pirahã really is a primitive language lacking recursion, and if one language out of thousands lacks recursion then Chomsky must have been wrong. Language is not innate–it’s just another human invention. Nothing to see here. Linguistics is of no interest to ID.

"I checked with an Amazonian linguist, one well within the Darwinian “cog-ling” camp and no supporter of Chomsky. He says that Everett is wrong about Pirahã.
Pirahã has more phonemes than Hawaiian. Unlike Hawaiian, it also has complex lexical tones some of which may be grammatical. The grammar is already complex:
There are, yes, primitive cultures lacking vocabulary we consider essential. Sometimes even numbers are unnamed (though these cultures generally count on their fingers). A few decades ago R. M. W. Dixon (1972, 1977, etc.) introduced linguists to such languages and their exotic grammars. We were all impressed.

"There is no language that cannot distinguish cause from effect, temporal relationships, volitional agents, consciousness, intention and purpose–even though elite materialists demean all this as merely “subjective” and not part of the reality they envision.

"One might conclude from Wolfe’s book that linguistics has failed to discover much at all. Chomsky strove for a theory of universal syntax that did not appeal to function, but other than acknowledging the fact that all languages are structured hierarchically, many now think the enterprise failed. But this does not mean there are no universals of grammar. There are many.

"There are absolute universals, implicational universals, universal tendencies, and so on. Linguistics is like biology. There is no comprehensive “theory” of biology. Biology is more observational than theoretical. And structure is linked to function much as in the typological-functional (now called “cognitive”) school of linguistics.
Nevertheless, Chomsky was right that grammar is instinctive. Children seem programmed to learn it. It is, in fact, children who create grammar.

"In learning a language, adults typically focus on words and miss the grammar. Little children do not parrot what they hear. They say, “Daddy goed store.” They grasp for grammatical regularities and learn later to incorporate irregularities. We are programmed to speak just as we are programmed to walk. We are empowered to invent and create and advance technology. We are not programmed to invent and create—hence “primitive” cultures with sophisticated grammars.

"Whence then this language facility? Likely, let me suggest, all the following:
1. Grammar is biologically innate
2. Grammar adapts to reality
3. Grammar is Platonic

"The study of stroke victims proves that the brain is involved. Cross-language studies reveal how grammar adapts to the environment. And if you are a mathematical realist, then why wouldn’t the mind of a child be attuned to logic that is “out there”? Maybe Michael Denton,’s “laws of biology?” Rupert Sheldrake’s “morphic resonances” perhaps also play a role. Adults have conscious access to vocabulary, and know when a foreigner gets pronunciation and grammar wrong, but adults mostly do not have conscious access to their grammars. Only little children have that.

"Language is not the mind–it is the principle code the mind uses. It is a window into the soul."

Comment: this authoritative comment seals the discussion for me. Chomsky is correct if Paraha is as expressive as this author describes it. God would want humans to have this language ability.