Re: Do children learn language more easily?


"Nathan Sanders" <nsanders@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:nsanders-BED85E.15585203122006@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In article <xylrgs0lvypo.39yzhszcg4qz$.dlg@xxxxxxxxxx>,
"Brian M. Scott" <b.scott@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Dec 2006 12:16:03 -0500, Nathan Sanders
<nsanders@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:nsanders-C9D25D.12160203122006@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> in
sci.lang:

[...]

> There are cases of so-called `feral children' who have had
> no known linguistic input during the first five years or
> so of their lives, and they were unable to learn
> language in a way resembling human usage.

Do you know of any who weren't also grossly mistreated?

I assume you mean aside from the lack of linguistic input, which is
itself gross enough mistreatment for my taste.

It's certainly the case that their childhoods were abnormal in other
respects besides language, and one could argue that these
abnormalities were sufficient to coincidentally account for their
inability to learn language, but somehow not impacting certain other
non-linguistic cognitive functions (for example, 'Genie' tested above
average in various non-linguistic tasks.)

But we can move the realm of feral children to deaf children to get
some more potential corroboration from more loving childhoods.

Children born deaf who learn sign language late have degraded language
ability in comparison to other children born deaf who learned it
earlier.

Further, even when learning sign language at the same age, children
born deaf have degraded language ability in comparison to children who
were born hearing (and thus received linguistic input during their
early years) but learned sign language after losing their hearing
later in childhood.

With a linguistic critical period, these and numerous other disparate
facts are all accounted for by a single explanation that mirrors other
human critical periods and biologically-timed processes.

Without a linguistic critical period, the data we have from feral
children, deaf children, the universality in the timing and nature of
stages of language acquisition, the differences between L1 and L2
acquisition, etc. are all unconnected, requiring multiple diverse
explanations that coincidentally converge on an apparent, but
ultimately illusory, critical period.

Possibly relevant: several recent studies on profoundly deaf children and cochlear implants (which of course provide only an extremely coarse approximation to normal hearing). One study shows that children given cochlear implants in their first year of life develop language and speech skills remarkably similar to those of hearing children (at least up to age 4 or 5, when the study ended). Children given implants between ages 1 and 2 acquire significantly less good language skills. Another study showed that a child getting an implant before age 2 has a 70% chance of attending an ordinary school, between 2 and 4 only a 30% chance. (New Scientist, 25 Nov).


And being exposed to, and learning, sign language in infancy doesn't seem to help much in acquiring good spoken language after getting an implant later in life (though, AFAIK, this wasn't specifically tested for).

The multiple-explanation theory of critical period effects is not
necessarily incorrect, but it's certainly not very Occam-friendly.

It appears that it's not a matter of a single switch being switched off all at once at age 5, or 10, or whatever. The language-learning device requires input of the right kind right from the start, and starts gradually switching off even before age 1 if it it doesn't get it.

John.

.

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