Re: THEORY: Question about the evolution of language

On Tue, 7 Sep 1999, Nik Taylor wrote:

> Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
> > But they had knowledge of communication and probably of language,
> > too - if you'd just dump babies with a group of deaf & dumb adults
> > who have been forbidden to communicate, I don't think the idea of
> > communication would arise.
>
> I disagree, I think that language is such a fundamental part of human
> nature that language would *have* to arise.  I have a hard time
> imagining how spoken words could be evolved, but I could see how sign
> language could evolve out of a sophisticated game of charades (which is
> essentially the origin of Nicaraguan Sign Language).
I have to go with Boudewijn on this one.  There have been well-documented
cases of children who were raised (singly or in pairs/groups) by abusive
or psychotic parents who kept them isolated and never spoke to them,
and in all cases they failed to develop language.

I think that some of the disagreement here stems from a misunderstanding
as to whether we're talking about "language" or "communication", which
are two very different things.  If the claim is that children, raised
in complete isolation without any exposure to language, will develop
a language of their own, then I would have to say that all of the evidence
we have indicates that that claim is false.  Linguistic development
requires linguistic input, pure and simple.  But if the claim is that
isolated children will somehow figure out a way to *communicate* with
each other, then the answer I think is that yes, they probably would.
But it would be some form of communication more akin to animal
communication, and qualitatively different from human language, both
in its structure and in its complexity.

As for the Nicaraguan Sign Language case, this is hardly a case of
a new language developing "from scratch".  The children who developed
NSL knew what language was (most of them came from hearing families,
after all), and probably most of them had developed "home sign" systems
with their families which, even if they weren't real languages, at
least approached the complexity of pidgins.  From the reports I heard,
much of the vocabulary of NSL was adapted from these home sign systems.

This isn't to say that the NSL case is uninteresting - it's extremely
interesting.  But it's interesting as an example of spontaneous
creolisation in action - the development of a 'complete' language out
of pidgin source material.  I don't think it qualifies as a case of
spontaneous language invention.

Matt.