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Why would they say to their child [creole] 'make milk gone', when they could say [native language] 'drink all your milk'?
Perhaps because the two parents speak different languages to each other with limited overlap, and the kids run around in a social group that draws on perhaps 4 other languages, as a typical example! Young people are always the creative force in language development, and no more so than at the frontiers where different languages collide and recombine. The young people end up teaching their parents a new language, by sheer pressure of efficiency (to take the topic back to its origins).
A short description of the typical process is something like:
1st generation, first step: multiple mother tongues combining in confusion
1st generation, second step: creation of simple pidgin as a mutual language
2nd generation: creation and development of creolized language
later generations: evolution of creole into separate mother tongue
the adults would do the same thing, given enough time together
They do. Just observe the workings of this virtual speech community, with its rapid accretion of 'insider' code!
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why does the development have to be furthered so much by children?
Because children don't have an existing structure overlaying whatever "natural" structure we may have hard-wired in our brains. One of Pinker's other notions (or at least a notion that I was introduced to by Pinker) is that grammar is reinvented every generation. We come into this world knowing not one iota of language yet, by the time we are 3 or 4 we can form semi-complex sentences and recognize "bad" grammar when we hear it. This grammar is formed from nothing but listening to and imitating the speech we hear about us; being rewarded for successful usage and mocked for unsuccessful usage. The few times we get explicit language usage instruction it is either wrong (i.e., not representative of the way our elders actually use the language, e.g., the can/may "rule") or a correction of application of a rule to an exception (e.g., a child who, up until now has been saying something like chiller as the plural of child "correcting" it to chiles or chillers).
By the time we become adults we have a good solid structure that we can use, even if that structure is almost non-existent as in the case of pidgins. The ability to use this innate grammar building talent seems to run out at about age 5 or so, which explains why many people continue to use the grammar they developed when first learning language despite the efforts of teachers to correct them. They just ain't getting them in time.
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veteran
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Point 1:
Interesting thing. I don't know if it's related.
As usual, I don't recall the details. This is what I think I remember.
There are different species of birds that look the same, but have different songs. You can take an egg from one species and have it nurtured raised by the other species. It will never learn the songs of either its own species or its adopted species. If bird songs are like languages, and if I have not misremembered or misrepresented, this might indicate that that there are cultural and genetic components to language (specifically grammar).
Point 2a:
Another thing I almost recall. I read somewhere (not a particularly reliable source, but I don't remember where it was for sure) that there are cases of kids who are "raised" (read 'abused') by putting them in a room and giving them no outside influences. The sad thing is that even after these kids are rescued, they never quite master their new language.
Point 2b:
Possibly corroborative anecdotal evidence. One of my best friends is this Korean fellow who was adopted by Americans. It's been a very long time since we discussed this, but I seem to recall he was adopted some time between 5 and 8 years old. In any case, this guy is really smart. But you wouldn't be able to tell it. He can't speak Korean any more except for a few words. And his English is terrible. Simple sentences are fine, but anything more complicated and it gets progressively difficult to understand what he's saying. A mutual Indian buddy was continually correcting K's English, but it just never sunk in. I interpret this as something traumatic happening to him during the time frame when he would normally be acquiring linguistic stability.
k
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Jacob Bronowsky, had an essay on this in his book (and TV series) Accent of Man..
he pointed out, as a child, he had mastered Polish. and that his parents, well educated Jews, were able to get out of Poland in the mid thirties, and settle in England.
There he was age 2.5, speaking only Polish.
but by age 5 when his parents moved to US, he hardly spoke any Polish, and now as an adult he doesn't know remember any Polish at all.
But-- a critial point in his life, (age 12 months to 3 years or so) he mastered language..
Yes, humans are hard wired to see in stereo, but if a child has a "lazy eye" (or some other visual problem with a singele eye) and it doesn't get corrected.. the child effectively becomes blind in that eye..
it's not that the eye doesn't "function" -it is that there is a window of opportunity.. and if you don't use it, you lose it.
So too with language.. Hearing children of Deaf parent might learn sign langauge as their first language.. and later pick up a oral language.. and they do fine.. but they might have some difficulties.. learning to hear the difference between R and L has to be done before the age of 4--or it is not going to happen.
In Japanese, it is the difference between Su and Tsu-- these subtle difference can only be taught at a young age.. and then the pathways harden. and the brain is less flexible..
perhaps your friend, as an orphan, never really mastered korean.. and now, he is unable to master english.. he was critically shortchanged, and nothing now can be done to remidy it completely.
reading, unlike language, does not seem to be so hardwired.. it is something some one can learn to do as an adult. speach and language are not.
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enthusiast
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Re your Point 2a, FF:
There are some fascinating, and very sad, descriptions of "feral" children, who were raised from infancy without exposure to language, and the evidence suggests that they are subsequently unable to acquire language skills, particularly in the area of grammatical structure. Francois Truffaut deals with one such case in his film "The Wild Child." Another instance concerns a girl named Genie, whose parents confined her to a room in their house, with no exposure to socialization or language. Several articles and books have been written about Genie. A number of them are referenced in Google if you search for Genie + feral. (I tried to list them here, but they didn't open (?)
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mav, you wrote: They do. Just observe the workings of this virtual speech community, with its rapid accretion of 'insider' code!...
Very good point there!
wwmm
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rapid accretion of 'insider' code!
Rapid accretion of insider code is one thing. Wholesale creation of a grammar where essential none existed before is something quite else.
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old hand
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A somewhat related article appears in this month's Smithsonian Magazine, wherein there is a discussion of how children process phonics vs whole word reading. The article suggests that the "window of acquisition" may be wider than previously thought.
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old hand
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But I have serious doubts that literacy will evolve. (i.e., the innate sense that abstract symbols can be combined to have a myrid of meanings)
You certainly wouldn't doubt that peoples' ways with words will continue to change. And which type of change is to be called evolution will remain a matter of debate. You could say that the elimination of case endings from nouns is evolution - it makes the language easier, i.e. the combinatorial aspect prevails. On the other hand, you could call it an impoverishment in forms, the dependency on context increases, and it becomes more difficult to master the language perfectly.
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Either Matt Ridley has misunderstood Steven Pinker or Jazzo's summary of Matt Ridley's book misrepresents Matt Ridley.
As I understand him, Steven Pinker's position (derived as has been noted from Chomsky) is that what is instinctual is not the particular rules of a particular language, but some sort of knowledge of what sort of syntactical and other rules are possible. Thus the child instinctively knows that adjectives could come before or after a noun and will then work out which is true for the particular language he or she is learning. The child also instinctively knows, for example, that languages do not form questions by pronouncing all the even-numbered words in a sentence backwards, and so he or she doesn't use that as a hypothesis for working out how the language concerned forms questions. In other words children innately know what clues to listen for when they are learning a language, but they still have to learn the syntax and other aspects of the particular language spoken around them.
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