Re: Do Children Learn Languages at Different Rates?

On Fri, 06 Jan 2006 13:20:23 GMT, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> Joseph W. Murphy wrote:
>
>> It might mean that there are some languages that children find easier to
>> learn than others.
>
> In that case, why haven't all languages evolved to be like Turkish? (Or,
> more to the point, why would languages have evolved away from the
> Turkish pattern?)

Is this a test? :-)

As you have told me yourself, many, many, many times, languages evolve in
all kinds of directions and for all kinds of reasons. And there doesn't
seem to be anything Darwinian about it. Why are Arabic plurals so wierd?
Why have Russian and Polish retained their inflections while Bulgarian has
jettisoned them? Why is French becoming agglutinative while Spanish and
Italian aren't? Why don't we all speak Loglan or Esperanto?

Maybe ease of acquisition isn't a major consideration in linguistic change.
Maybe "ease of acquisition" isn't even a factor in it at all.

Also, the differences in child acquisition rates (assuming they really
exist) between languages really don't appear to be all that important.
Slobin says by 4 or 5 years, all children are basically speaking their
native languages. So what difference would it make from the standpoint of
"evolution" if a Turkish kid is grammatically fluent a few months earlier
than a Russian child or an American?

Joe Murphy
Boy Linguist
.

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