Number 118
Last weekend I saw a one-woman play by Kristin Clippard about a feral child called Genie, based on the real case of a child discovered in 1970 in Los Angeles who had been locked in a room, tied to a chair, until she was 13 years old. She couldn't speak and it was not clear if she was born mentally retarded, or if her retardation had been caused by the abuse and lack of teaching. In 1997 NOVA produced a documentary on the case, which I found at my local library, called "Secret of the Wild Child" (transcript is at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2112gchild.html ).
Among others, linguists were deeply interested in this case, hoping to discover more about human language learning. It seems that not only does language depend on innate brain function, but left brain function is stimulated by learning language.
According to the documentary, even after several years of therapy, "Genie didn't seem to be able to put words together in a normal, grammatical way. This seemed to support the idea of a critical period for acquiring language."
However, the examples from the documentary did not convince me that this was true. Genie was certainly able to learn, although she didn't speak well. One example of her faulty sentence construction was this question: "What red blue is in?" Her teacher, Susan Curtiss, asked, "Does that make sense? Is that a silly question?" One reason I don't think this demonstrates inability to construct syntax is that earlier in the program, Curtiss said that when she took Genie to Woolworth's, the girl was fascinated by the many colors of thread for sale. Her teacher was unable to give her a separate name for each color ~ she could only say, "That's dark blue, that's darker blue," etc. "What red blue is in?" could possibly mean something like, "What shade of red has blue in it?" Any artist might think of this.
Curtiss further said,
In Genie's case, the vocabulary was what she was good at. Conveying messages is what she was good at. But if you look at a sentence that she would utter, it wouldn't be grammatical, so she might say things like, "Spot chew glove," "Applesauce buy store," where the message was clear. You know, the dog named Spot chewed the glove, or we need applesauce, we need to buy applesauce at the store. But, in both of these cases, you can see they're not sentences of English. We wouldn't say, "Applesauce buy store." We would say, "We need to buy applesauce at the store." Or, "Applesauce is what we want from the store," or something that is an actual sentence of English.
True, "Applesauce buy store" is not a good English sentence, it does not show good English grammar, but it does convey meaning. However, there are other languages that do not depend on word order to convey meaning. I'm no linguist, but I believe that some languages not only don't rely on word order, they don't have the variety of verb tenses or inflection of nouns, etc. that English has. For example, some highly educated Chinese people I met in Boston had difficulty translating a poem in Chinese characters not only because the meaning was abstract but because the sentences are not easy to understand. Perhaps the meaning of words is ambiguous, the relations between words isn't mathematically absolute as in English. I'm not saying that Genie should have been learning Chinese, but she clearly was learning language. The innate ability to learn language posited by Chomsky and others surely does not imply only ability to learn English or other European languages. Genie may have passed the age where she could have learned English easily. Some of my students have a hard time learning English for various reasons, and they are intelligent people, well educated in their native languages. When I studied Spanish, I was able to learn the grammar but never was able to roll my R's, never had a good accent, though I'm sure that if I'd learn when I was much younger, I could have done it.
The study of English is never-ending. I am reminded of a marginal note in the wonderful book by Betty Edwards, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain:
From the age of six, I had a mania for drawing the form of things. By the time I was fifty, I had published an infinity of designs, but all that I have produced before the age of seventy is not worth taking into account. At seventy-three I have learned a little about the real structure of nature, of animals, plants, birds, fishes, and insects. In consequence, when I am eighty, I shall have made more progress; at ninety, I shall penetrate the mystery of things; at a hundred, I shall have reached a marvelous stage; and when I am a hundred and ten, everything I do, be it but a dot or line, will be alive. ~ Written at the age of seventy-five by me, once Hokusai, today Owakio Rojin, old man mad about drawing (page 193 of the first 1979 edition)
Drawing, speaking, writing, learning: we're just beginning.
The moderator of a televised panel discussion asked a speaker, "Who would you like to react to that?" ("that" being a comment or question).
"Answer" is one synonym of "react" but why not say "answer"? Using the word "react" this way weakens it. It usually means respond with some sort of action. An answer is usually verbal. I get the picture of a panelist reacting by leaping to the stage and either throttling or kissing the speaker. Now that would be reaction.
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