Re: spontaneously speaking another language

From: LEE Sau Dan (danlee_at_informatik.uni-freiburg.de)
Date: 08/17/04 

Date: 17 Aug 2004 11:12:45 +0200

>>>>> "Scott" == Scott Far Thunder <bakersco@msu.edu> writes:

    Scott> Hau kolas..I got into a discussion with a coworker today
    Scott> regarding cognitive ability of children, and it came to be
    Scott> that I seem to recall hearing something about children
    Scott> basically spontaneously speaking another language with no
    Scott> exposure to it...for instance a child in latin america
    Scott> bursting into say German or French, with no prior exposure
    Scott> to this new language. I can't recall wether there was
    Scott> something else goin on..emerging from autism etc. Anybody
    Scott> heard of this before? I believe there's a scientific term
    Scott> for it..any ideas to help me search this down? If this is
    Scott> not the appropriate forum, pardon me, where should I ask?
    Scott> Thanks in advance :)

Yeah, and this happens on you (adult?), too, from time to time. Just
utter some "nonsense" sound like "blahblahblah". Then, someone
somewhere may take this utterance and interpret it as word for XXX in
language YYY. The trick: there are so many languages in the world to
choose from and in each language, there are so many words to choose
from. So, it is highly likely that in some language YYY, there exists
a word XXX which sounds almost like your random utterance. And
assuming that you've been exposed to fewer than a dozen languages,
then it is also likely that you have never been exposed to this
language YYY. It is thus just one step to interpret your random
utterance as "spontaneously speaking another language with no exposure
to it". 

-- 
Lee Sau Dan                     +Z05biGVm-                          ~{@nJX6X~}
E-mail: danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee

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