Re: Do Children Learn Languages at Different Rates?

Joseph W. Murphy wrote:
>
> 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? :-)

It's a reductio ad absurdum. You assume something contrary to fact,
discover that it leads to nonsense, so the initial assumption was false.

I.e., we've reasoned to the understanding that no languages are easier
to learn natively than others.

> 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?
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.

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