Great question, AnnaS – and thanks for the pointer to that fascinating article. I had not previously heard of Patricia Kuhl’s work, so now have some more exploring to do!
I have little specialist knowledge of this area of study, but it seems instinctively right to me. It’s consistent with what I observe of so many human characteristics: that our brains seem particularly adapted to look for patterns, to the extent that we filter out the redundant data (even ‘interference’, in the context of a second language, in Kuhl’s terms). But I would think that – that’s my pattern!
I’m just reading Describing Language*, and can see a correlation between the description of Malinowski’s and Halliday’s views with Kuhl’s experiments on the brain’s formative phase. In this general survey, Malinowski is represented as stressing the importance of “the meaning of each utterance within the actual context”, quoted approvingly by Halliday as “a context of situation” – this is all, as I understand it, contrasting with another model of speech which views language as a mere code passing information like morse between two terminals.
So if we learn language in our most formative and receptive stage of development, and do so in ways that Patricia Kuhl’s experiments strongly suggests is inclusive of non-verbal and contextual information (as our intuition might have suggested is the case!), then what could be more natural than that this pattern should be repeated in subsequent life? In other words we absorb, with that formative language and accent and vocabulary, a whole set of equally formative “emotional mechanism… closely linked with the formation of the unique culture and mentality …” of the group. I would dispute Tsunoda’s leap to identify this with ethnicity, however: seems to me to be linked logically only to the cultural imprint offered by the adults. This may be the same thing in effective outcome, but can be traced to raising, not race.
Where was the Sapir quote from – is it in Culture, Language & Personality?
BTW, my 13 year old daughter was reading the print-out of the Smithsonian article over supper last night, and said “Cool! I’ve got two language maps in my brain! I spoke Welsh at school and English at home.”
Forgive the ramblings of just an amateur dabbler – I would be fascinated to hear the perspective of more experienced students in this area, and also of La Belle Dame and our other bilingual members.
*For anyone interested the reference was to:
Describing Language
Graddol, Cheshire & Swann
OU Press, 1994
ISBN 0 335 19315 3
