Re: Gender in language

In article <Xns984D98971DE90johnpf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
John Flynn <johnpf@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Nathan Sanders wrote:

John Flynn wrote:

Which makes me wonder why it is believed to be "hard-wired" and not,
instead, a learned feature.

Are blue eyes learned? Not every human has them...

I'll ask again, but this time try to stick with language.

Why do you think that it is "hard-wired" and not a learned feature?

Non-human animals do not use language, nor can they learn it. Newborn
puppies raised by English-speakers do not learn English (they may
learn to recognize a small handful of vocabulary, of course, but they
never learn anything remotely close to the human ability to recognize
novel utterances formed from productive decomposition and
recombination).

Thus, if we can learn X and animals cannot, then (our ability to
learn) X must be "hard-wired".

It's an open question whether all linguistic features are merely
epiphenomena built up from more fundamental cognitive functions that
are not focused solely on language.

But holding such a belief is vastly different from believing that
everything about language is hard-wired. That would be absurd, and
surely you wouldn't suggest it!

Remember, I'm talking about language here. Not physical features of an
organism.

Why do you think that language is not a "physical feature"?

Language. The thing that takes children several years to
learn. The thing that newborns do not possess the moment they emerge
into the world.

Puberty is also something that newborns do not possess the moment they
emerge into the world. Is it thus not a "physical feature"?

See the decades-old debate between behaviorists and nativists for
more extensive arguments and evidence from both sides.

I'm painfully aware of the debate.

Your questions are poorly framed, then. You make it sound like you
haven't heard the debate and are looking for other people to fill you
in on its major results. We are not a textbook.

However, that specific debate (of
nativist versus behaviorist) is not the one that is appropriate. There
are more positions to take than merely "behaviorist" if one believes
the nativists are naïvely simplistic in their view of biology.

There are more positions than merely "nativist" if one believes that
behaviorists are naïvely simplistic in their view of biology.

This is why I took care to point out that there was evidence from both
sides --- it's not just a simple matter of language being hard-wired
or not being hard-wired. The answer is more complex than the question
you posed, which is why I referred you to the debate that seemed to be
outside your awareness.

I'm just saddened that people still leap immediately to the "It's all
in the genes, people!" approach to language as if merely wanting it
to be true makes it so.

Oh, okay, you *are* going to suggest it!

Even the most ardent nativists would freely admit that huge portions
(if not the vast majority) of language is learned. Perhaps you aren't
as "painfully aware" of the debate as you claim.

Nathan

--
Nathan Sanders
Linguistics Program
Williams College
http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders/

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Relative merits of Lisp-1 vs. Lisp-2?
    ... language, not really as customizations of the current language. ... The design was not "from scratch". ... bad than that your feature is good. ... but I won't now debate that. ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Re: Relative merits of Lisp-1 vs. Lisp-2?
    ... If reading data that might be ill-formed, defining your language to ... to dismiss my concern about this issue as irrelevant and unimportant, ... This argument would apply to *any* proposed new feature, ... incompatibilities were simply the result of someone doing something ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Re: Graphic GUI C
    ... features in C99) is also a feature of C++. ... expect the C language and the C standard library to do everything; ... nothing is more commonplace than the need for one or more libraries in ... The same is true inside of WSH where all of the functionality ...
    (comp.lang.c)
  • Re: Gender in language
    ... Language is a physical feature of the human organism. ... the nativists are naïvely simplistic in their view of biology. ... Well, if we can say it's in the genes, we can look for it there. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Whats the deal with C99?
    ... be in the language. ... languages by itself speaks volumes about what programmers want. ... There's no feature added to C99 that addresses even one thing that has ... There's no controversy about memory management? ...
    (comp.lang.c)