In reading the Carnie, the section that caught my interest the most is Chomsky's claim that the human capacity for Language is innate. Section 4.3 presents an interesting proof of this claim, which while admittedly suspect, makes you wonder if there is something hard-wired into our brains that gives us the fundamental capacity to understand each other. I believe that it is true, but only to a certain extent: our "instinct" for Language is, in my opinion, limited to our physical anatomy, and therefore hard-wired into our anatomy as well.
I believe that our languages exist as they do not just because we have the brains, but because we have the body parts at our disposal for our certain avenues of communication. We speak in languages because we have the vocal complexity to produce a wide array of different sounds alongside sets of ears to distinguish all of them. Not all languages are spoken, however (and I'm not talking about "universal languages" such as pain, love, music, etc): consider American Sign Language. ASL works as a language because we have hands and facial expressions that can communicate a similarly wide array of ideas alongside a set of eyes to distinguish all of them.
As an exercise, consider a society in which people (for whatever reason) cannot speak nor hear, so all Language is a form of sign language such as ASL. In this society, suppose there is a child who's eyes cannot function, but their brain remains perfectly intact in every way. This child would be unable to communicate with others in any meaningful way, because they would not have the anatomical ability to understand the native process for Language. No matter how hard they try, I imagine it would be impossible for a blind person to fully learn sign language, even in a society where signing is the only effective way of communicating Language. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that this child is incapable of Language, so they must have no "instinct" for language in the same way that the rest of the society does.
But wait--isn't this child's brain as fully functional as the rest? This example suggests to me that Language is innate, but is not solely innate to our brains. One would not say that dolphins, who have recently been observed having legitimate conversations, are incapable of Language. Their innate quality is tied to their own specific cetacean anatomy, just as our innate quality is tied to our own anatomy as well. It must be hard-wired to our entire bodies--brains, eyes, ears, mouth--every organ that we use for communication.
Interesting tying into entirely different language paradigms such as ASL, I hadn't thought about it like that!
ReplyDeleteThat said, my general thoughts about the proof were that the second premise was questionable - it seems to me that if you can learn the rules of the system, that's enough to say you've learned the system. I don't know much about ASL, but I wonder if the same can hold there - that a general pattern of principles holds as to how signs can be strung together and so on, and that just knowing those principles enough.
I'm also not sure how I feel about your analogy of the blind society. I'd totally agree that the child's brain is as functional as everyone else's, but I'm not sure I'd agree that they don't have the same 'instinct' for language as all others. I'd contend that if anything, they don't have the capability for that society's language, which means we can't say anything about their instinct for it. It's just like a deaf person today - they may not have the capability to speak English, but that doesn't mean they don't have a language instinct, and that would be true even if English was the only language in the world. I think this gets at that whole idea of Language (with a capital 'L') versus language which Carnie discussed early in the book.
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ReplyDeleteHi JRave, love testing the edge case here, I feel like it's really the only way to understand a system.
ReplyDeleteHellen Keller is probably the most well known example of someone blind and deaf and could communicate incredibly effectively in a society of people that could speak. I therefore think that she'd be entirely capable of doing so in a sign-only language
I'm a tad confused about the logical jump at the end, I think the idea of some innate language centre in the brain supersedes the way in which is communicated; this is why reading and ASL are equally effective ways of communicating ideas assuming the receiver could understand them.
I think that its entirely likely that at some point humans will have the ability to communicate with (at the very least) dolphins, our ability to infer meaning from patterns (using what I would think is the language part of our brain) and eventually have that "settle in" as an innate system of language, means that its just a matter of time.
But of course that's all just conjecture. That's why this week's reading was so fun - it was a lot of unknowns and philosophy, with some good science thrown in for good measure.