Re: THEORY: Question about the evolution of language

JOEL MATTHEW PEARSON wrote:
> 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.
But those were extremely small groups.  I think that, once you reach a
certain critical mass (my guess is a few dozen), language will
spontaneously develop.  But, this is unprovable, and little more than a
guess.

> Linguistic development
> requires linguistic input, pure and simple.
Ah, but Nicaraguan Sign Language seems to violate that.  Admittedly,
they did come from families where they had some sort of crude
communication (a few dozen signs at most), however, I don't see any
reason why these hypothetical children would not develop first a few
dozen signs, and then perhaps a full-blown sign-language in the manner
of NSL.  Speach is harder to see a development of.

> 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.
Well, it was far more limited than most creoles.  Creoles typically come
from fully-developed languages, first pidginized.  From what I
understand, they had nothing approaching even a crude pidgin before
being brought together.

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