A Dualist Theory of Linguistic Development: From Intuitive Concepts to Coherent Social Understanding

Barner, Brooks and Bale present an intriguing and very specific hypothesis: that while children are intuitively capable of logical linguistic reasoning, they have yet to develop the kind of generalized logical intuitions that allow them to parse scalars like “some” or “none” without context. Specifically, while children find it hard to reason about statements like “some fruits are green”, statements such as “some of the grapes, apples and pears are green” can be understood from a relatively early linguistic age. This is because children struggle with context-neutral pointers, instead relying on explicit references to objects they have seen.

This proposition was to me vaguely counterintuitive, since if we believe that humans are born or intuit some basic logic, it is unclear why that logic is more easily applied to the specific than the general; rather, I would have assumed the inverse. BBB’s experimental observation – coupled with Sumner’s work on linguistic context – presents an interesting potential model for conceptualizing linguistic learning. Indeed, it is one that Stiller, Goodman and Frank hint at when they explain their “integrated” approach.

Perhaps it is the case that we are gifted with some intuitive “ad hoc” knowledge (to quote SGF) – or innate linguistic competence – but it is only capable of explicit, basic steps (for example, taking the fact statement “there is a red duck, a blue duck and a green duck” to respond to the claim that “some of the three ducks you saw are green”). What societal context and repeated learning provides is the ‘scaffolding’ that allows us to apply that same logical reasoning to broader examples. That is to say, by repeated exposure to logical statements applied in conversation, we become capable of scalar implicature without needing specific object pointers to do it, instead interpreting “some ducks are red” as “some of the ducks x, y, z just seen are red” smoothly.

This theory explains why context matters to language, but also why statements themselves have some relevance and (when explained step by step) can be interpreted and responded to even by children. Moreover, it reconciles the innate versus learned theories of language by explaining that the fundamentals are internal, but their application – and speedy utilization – are societally taught.

The theory explains BBB, SGF, and also Clark and Hecht’s observations that competence with complex linguistic concepts (ex. comparatives) starts at a simplistic baseline and then evolves from contextual exposure. It also seems to tie in with the general neurological observation that brains begin in a similar base state and evolve from exposure and neuron firings. To that extent, this conception of the mind – with basic connections at birth, and contextual developments that speed reasoning during childhood development – seems a biologically and evidentially logical one to adopt.