15.+The+great+language+debate

April 14, 2015
 * 15. The great language debate**

Is language uniquely human? Nature vs. nurture Nicaraguan sign language Nim
 * Outline**

The great debate: are we built for language?
 * Skinner: Language learning comes from the same mechanisms that govern all learning (i.e., the principles of operant conditioning).
 * Skinner says it's nurture
 * Chomsky: Conditioning can't explain language learning. We're built to learn language.
 * Chomsky says it's nature and nurture

Two research approaches:
 * Research approach 1: Find a group of people who are similar to non-human animals
 * Haven't been exposed to language
 * Live together
 * Research approach 2: Raise an animal like a human

Summary:
 * Nicaraguan Sign Language**
 * Pre 1977, deaf people were isolated and there was no sign language. They didn't learn any language.
 * Then, deaf children were brought together in a school in Managua.
 * They were a community with no common language.
 * They weren't taught sign language
 * They were taught Spanish and lip reading
 * They were allowed to gesture in their spare time
 * The first group (cohort) created a smile language that quickly evolved greater complexity (researchers didn't arrive right away, so no observations of the early years)
 * Cohort 1's knowledge froze at puberty (due to critical periods)
 * Cohort 3's knowledge froze at puberty too
 * This allows us to observe the evolution of the language by comparing cohort 1 to cohort 3 (like comparing a person from 1980 to a person from 1984)
 * Example: A cohort 3 kid is instructed to tell his cohort 1 aunt to point to the box with a circle around it.
 * The sign language that the cohort 3 kid uses is more complex. He is able to tell her to point to the ball that's under the box. The cohort 1 aunt can't understand what the cohort 3 kid is trying to describe because her language doesn't allow it.
 * [[image:NSL.png width="248" height="193"]]
 * Experiment: View cartoon, sigh story to a deaf peer. At the end of the cartoon, the character kind of rolls and wobbles.
 * Gesture combines, language does not
 * We say rolling and wobbling
 * We gesture Wrobbling?
 * "Wrobbling"
 * Spanish speakers making gestures
 * Cohort 1
 * "Rolling & wobbling"
 * Cohort 2 & 3
 * Evidence that the language continually evolved
 * Kids quickly developed a shared language from nothing
 * This new language shared features with all other languages
 * The only ingredient necessary: People together


 * Animal Language**

Examples of communication among animals:
 * Alex the parrot could communicate. Knew 150 words, could recognize quantities up to 6, could distinguish 7 colors and 5 shapes, and understand the concept of "bigger," "smaller," "same," and "different."
 * But that doesn't mean he could use "language"
 * Koko the gorilla learned 645 signs and had a working vocabulary of about 375 words.
 * Bees can tell each other where to go by dancing and buzzing
 * Monkeys use specific alarm calls to warn each other about predators
 * Animals can communicate, but do they have language?

Essential features of language
 * Symbolic
 * Words stand for things
 * Abstract
 * Words do not have features of the things they represent
 * Words can refer to things that aren't present
 * Syntactic
 * Words are organized into categories
 * Meaning depends on rules (e.g., order)
 * Generative
 * Unlimited novel combinations of words can be created and understood

Kanzi
 * Kanzi was adopted by Matata, who would bring him along while she was being trained by Sue (a human) to learn to communicate with lexigrams (pictures that stand for something)
 * Kanzi started learned to point to lexigrams to communicate, without being explicitly taught.
 * But can his form of communication be considered language?
 * It was symbolic
 * It was abstract
 * Questionably syntactic
 * Not generative

Terrace et al. 1979: Can an ape create a sentence?


 * Nim was raised in a family home, and we went to lab to learn sign language. He was raised like a human child, and eventually moved to a huge estate with humans who signed with him constantly. He continued to go to lab to learn signs.
 * Was Nim's form of communication generative?
 * In children, longer utterances convey more information
 * Nim's longest utterance was: "Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you"
 * Nim's communication was:
 * Symbolic
 * Abstract
 * Questionably syntactic
 * Not generative

Are humans built for language?
 * Non-human animals can't learn language
 * Nim, Kanzi, etc.
 * You can hardly stop human kids from doing it
 * NSL
 * Homesign
 * Human brain is specialized for language
 * Anomia for tools, etc.