История Маугли со счастливым концом

[spamsink]

Считается, что дети, выросшие в изоляции от человеческого общества, по достижении определенного возраста утрачивают способность к языку. Эксперименты по языковой депривации, пока не считались неэтичными, были ненаучными и к однозначным результатам не приводили, а потом перешли в разряд запрещенных экспериментов.



Искать глухих детей слышащих родителей.

Susan Schaller, автор книги Man Without Words, рассказывает о глухом мужчине, который не имел понятия о языке до 27-летнего возраста.

I went to the door to walk out and was actually turning the handle to leave, when I see this man who looked so frightened. He was holding himself as if he were wearing a straightjacket. He was backed up in a corner, protecting himself. I saw that he was studying mouths, he was studying people. Even though he was frightened, he was still watching: what is happening, what is happening?

...

I walked up to him and signed, “Hello. My name is Susan.” He tried to copy that and did a sloppy rendition of “Hello, my name is Susan.” Obviously he didn’t know what he was doing. It wasn’t language. And I was shocked.
He looked Mayan and I thought, well, if he knew Mexican sign language, he wouldn’t try to copy. That’s not a normal thing to do, even if you don’t know the language. I couldn’t walk away. I slowly figured out that this man had no language. As I said, I could see that he was very intelligent. I could see he was trying very hard. I was twenty-two years old. I had no idea of what I was doing. I was faced with how to communicate the idea of language to someone without language.

Дальше там есть место, где Сюзан говорит ...it was the most emotional moment with another human being, I think, in my life so that even now, after all these years, I’m choking up [pauses] - после того, как я прочитал, почему именно, мои глаза увлажнились.

---

Ну и что мы теперь будем делать к гипотезой критического периода?

Comments

[geish-a.livejournal.com]

Это утверждение уже ближе к теме. Ты это процитировала из статьи по ссылке, или это твое личное утверждение?

[uzheletta.livejournal.com]

it's a paraphrase of what i've learned in the university/grad school.
it's pretty much the accepted position among psycholinguists.
there are some mild controversies around details (especially around what's innate and what isn't), but this general view is pretty widely accepted.

[geish-a.livejournal.com]

I see. I've learned these things in grad school too, of course. Maybe it was later than you learned it (10 yrs ago), but in my linguistics courses the notion of critical period didn't mean "total loss of language ability". It meant that the language learned at or after a certain age (which is different for everyone and allegedly depends on the onset of puberty, too) will always be deficient in some way and full acquisition will not be achieved. Which is not contradictory in any way to the story of the Indian man above. But you and I seem to be in agreement about that.

Now, the point of my discussion with spamsink is that he referred to an article in Wikipedia as saying that critical period means total loss of language ability (if I understood him correctly). In this case the story of the man would contradict this hypothesis. But neither my previous knowledge on the subject (from my linguistic grad school), nor the first paragraphs of the quoted Wiki article support his definition of the critical period. So I don't see any contradiction here, except that spamsink either misunderstand the concept of CP, or uses some outdated definition of it.
That's all.

[uzheletta.livejournal.com]

we went to grad. school approximately at the same time (10 y.ago) :)
i think Spamsink took issues with your example of second language learning as a counter-evidence to full loss of language learning abilities after CP, and it isn't a good counter-example, since second language acquisition happens with the language faculty being fully activated in childhood.

now, although CP has been revised to SP because, like you said, some language learning does happen, there is an agreement that the process is largely different. There is no vocabulary vocabulary spurt, there is never proficiency in syntax, etc.

These difference are salient enough to propose that it is NOT the language specific facility, but rather a domain general memory that guides this learning, and that's why it is so effortful and with inevitable deficiencies in mastery.
in this sense, CP hypothesis holds true, that if you do not activate the faculty (say, Wernike area) at the certain period, it won't be activated at all. but since you are not brain dead, you can still learn some language just like you learn other facts in life, but without involving language specific mechanisms.

now, this view has been voiced, but couldn't have been tested due to lack of data.
so, these are all just speculations, since no controlled studies are possible.

[geish-a.livejournal.com]

It was me who "took issues" with spamsink's quoting Wiki as stating something that it doesn't actually state (in my opinion), and in general with his interpretation of CP.

[uzheletta.livejournal.com]

ну может статью надо уточнить, чтобы не было недопониманий.
что КП - это период для активизации определенного нейромеханизма, который обусловит конкретные процессы и результаты. но если человек может формировать новую память, он также может формировать и linguistic memories, используя общий механизм памяти. просто ни процесс, ни результат не будут сравнимы с тем, что получается, когда language faculty is activated during CP.

[uzheletta.livejournal.com]

as far as this particular man goes, then you are right of course, i don't think further revisions of the hypothesis are necessary, since it's been revised to SP about 20 (or so) years ago.