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

by dhw, Sunday, March 05, 2017, 13:43 (2818 days ago) @ David Turell

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

David’s 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.

I’m pressed for time, but in any case have expressed my own views on several occasions. Briefly, all organisms need to communicate. Humans with their enhanced consciousness need enhanced forms of communication. I have never heard of anybody saying that language “is the mind”: it is the principle code the mind uses in order to communicate. “Window into the soul” is nice and poetic – but it’s usually used of the eyes, which might be a much better guide. You only have to listen to our politicians to know that language can be used to hide as much as it reveals. There are said to be about 7000 different languages in the world, all serving the same purpose, which means inevitably they will have certain features in common, such as sounds that denote different objects or actions, but there is no universal “grammar”, and children learn to use the particular sounds, structures, “grammars” they hear in their particular environment. Feral children learn the language of the animals that have brought them up. All organisms must have an innate ability to learn the language of their species, using whatever means are available to them. If God exists and created life, it is perfectly reasonable to assume that he gave all organisms the ability to communicate in their own particular ways. One might ask why he gave humans different languages to communicate in, but my guess would be that he didn’t: mine would be that different sets of humans worked out their own sounds, structures, “grammars”.