Re: OT: Helen Keller & Whorf-Sapir

Caleb wrote:

> the tail end of an article about Helen Keller. This got me thinking
> about the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis. Now I don't claim to be a linguist,
> so I could be wrong, but my understanding is that this basically says
> 1) One possibility, I suppose, could be that she came up with her own
> sort of internal 'language', completely different and independent of
> English and unrelated to spoken words. It would have to be
> a 'language' based on touch, texture, and motion, rather than
This post from Language Log, and the followups to it,
suggest that Helen Keller's own account of her life
is maybe romanticised and oversimplified.  In particular, she was
old enough when she lost her sight and hearing that she had probably
already begun acquiring English.

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001041.html

> abstract words. But it would also suggest that language is an
> inherent part of the human mind, and that the human mind is capable
> of creating language without needing to be taught it.
I think it was Leonard Bloomfield who suggested that language
may have been independently invented many times through
human history, in regions where children whose parents get killed
have some chance to survive on their own.  Not sure if I believe that.


- Jim Henry
http://www.mindspring.com/~jimhenry/conlang.htm