Are we born with the a language gene or do we learn it from a blank slate?

[Giaodollo]

As the topics state, what is your opinion? Obviously I am talking about our mother tongue and as newborns.

[magic chiongson]

you learn it

[fiddy]

:crazysam:

[KNOW1EDGE]

Are you serious?

[DeuceWallaces]

:facepalm

[Batz]

Probably gonna have to pizza this one.

[Hittin_Shots]

Are you asking if we're born with a better understanding of the language our parents spoke or if we were put somewhere else would we pick it up that language just as easy...

Really?

[~primetime~]

https://p.gr-assets.com/540x540/fit/hostedimages/1404072069/10187353.gif

[24-Inch_Chrome]

http://i.imgur.com/TJJ9YVS.jpg

[L.Kizzle]

Anything is possible

[NumberSix]

That's actually very interesting. Recent discovery has actually shown that life experiences do affect the biology of following generations.

Obviously, language has to be learned, but whether the experiences of ancestors makes a genetic impact is very interesting and definitely worth exploring.

Always remember. Our understanding of DNA is still pretty new. Don't think for a second that in that short amount of time we have it all figured out. There's still an enormous amount about biology that we don't know.

[RidonKs]

both.... kinda depends what you mean by language lol

[Giaodollo]

That's actually very interesting. Recent discovery has actually shown that life experiences do affect the biology of following generations.

Obviously, language has to be learned, but whether the experiences of ancestors makes a genetic impact is very interesting and definitely worth exploring.

Always remember. Our understanding of DNA is still pretty new. Don't think for a second that in that short amount of time we have it all figured out. There's still an enormous amount about biology that we don't know.

I think I expressed myself badly in the OP, but thanks for your non sarcastic post at least:oldlol:

I was reading about Noam Chomskys research about universal grammar and how linguistic structure are innate in humans. This was back in the 50s, so I suppose as you say it is still "new".

I was also reading about an experiment from deaf children, four american and four Chinese children all aged 3 to 4 when the experiment took place. They were documented with help of film and the mothers all tried to speak loudly so the children learnt how to read lips etc. Also all of them used different signs with help of their hands to help the children understand.

a quick quote from the text


We have shown that deaf children who are not exposed to a usable model of a conventional
language are nevertheless able to create gestures to communicate about motion
events. Even more striking, these children create gestures for all nine of the semantic
elements considered to be central to grammaticizing a motion event without guidance
from a language model.
In addition, we have found that deaf children raised in two very different cultures package
the elements of a motion event in precisely the same ways
Bolded most interesting.

https://goldin-meadow-lab.uchicago.edu/sites/goldin-meadow-lab.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/PDFs/2002_Zheng_GM.pdf

[Giaodollo]

both.... kinda depends what you mean by language lol
Yeah I am sorry I think i expressed myself badly in the topic and the OP.

[RidonKs]

I was also reading about an experiment from deaf children, four american and four Chinese children all aged 3 to 4 when the experiment took place. They were documented with help of film and the mothers all tried to speak loudly so the children learnt how to read lips etc. Also all of them used different signs with help of their hands to help the children understand.

that's funny that they spoke loudly on purpose. don't you think that might like distort the language sample for the kid if you intentionally exaggerated the shape of your mouth? edit: i just realized the idea behind speaking loudly is exactly to prevent that possibly misleading sort of exaggeration.

there is growing evidence to support a lot of language acquisition occurring way before anything's ever exhibited verbally. the research comes from early onset deaf/blind kids who then, as you say, continue to improve their language abilities using more limited data like lip reading. deaf/blind people also feel faces to help as well which is even harder to use but still possible. you put your thumb on the person's vocal chords and your fingers on their jaw line as they speak.

the language capacity is truly amazing. i've heard it described as one of very few systems in the biological world that operates on discreet infinity. a sentence can literally go on forever without breaking any "rules". though i'm hesitant now to go on, the word "rule" has become controversial. philosophers attempting to implement the research of linguistics in the last 50 years have been accused of taking the academic work out of context in broader application. but i don't know nearly enough about it to elaborate further.

here's an interesting exchange on the subject between chomsky and john searle (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2002/jul/18/chomskys-revolution-an-exchange/)


In addition, we have found that deaf children raised in two very different cultures package the elements of a motion event in precisely the same ways
what does it mean by "package the elements"? do they use the same gestures to signify the motion event? that would seem like just a wild coincidence. though the fact that the nine motions sync up with the number of grammatical notions of motion (or whatever) is very telling.

[RidonKs]

here are a few paragraphs about the redirection of research into linguistics since chomsky entered the scene. another nytimes exchange, the one that prompted the last link i posted.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2002/apr/25/chomskys-revolution/


The title of John Searle’s article “End of the Revolution” [NYR, February 28], and much of what he writes in that article, are seriously misleading. Searle basically proclaims that Chomsky has been forced to abandon the core tenets of his earlier work in linguistics. That is simply not the case. The “Chomskian revolution” rested on three fundamental conjectures. The first was that the essential characteristics of each sentence of each natural language (mature human idiolect) can be represented by a derivation, that is, by a sequence of hierarchical structures. The second was that each hierarchical structure in such a sequence (derivation) is related to its predecessor by a mapping1 which satisfies specifiable (though by no means obvious) universal conditions. The third was that the universal conditions on the mappings (and on the order in which they are invoked in derivations) are determined by innate characteristics of the human mind/brain, or language capacity, or what he more recently, somewhat infelicitously, came to call “the human language organ,” and thus not by social factors, conventions, practical considerations, or other extrinsic contingencies.

These three conjectures were supplemented with some subsidiary ones; for instance, that each derivation breaks up into three parts, a syntactic part, a phonological part, and a semantic part, each calling for its own type of representational devices; that the phonological and semantic parts each have as initial elements an element from the syntactic part. And so on. These conjectures have shaped and continue to shape the empirical research of generative linguists. In other words, they, together with a massive amount of empirical data, are the presuppositions of the problems these linguists, Chomsky included, seek to solve. They are the core hypotheses confirmed by the many hard-earned and often surprising discoveries of generative linguistics. They are the conjectures about language that Chomsky’s predecessors in linguistics either never entertained or resisted most assiduously when first set forth, and which contemporary linguists who reject the Chomskian program seek to replace.

[shlver]

Language is the ability to symbolize: to use one thing to refer to another and there are multiple inputs which are utilized to create a reference system like sight, sound and touch as mentioned in this thread. So all human toddlers learn language, but the language is unique to the inputs introduced to the toddler. There is no language gene as it is a complex process. However, language is genetic in the sense that all the parts of the brain and physiology which contribute to language have genetic and evolutionary underpinnings that support its manifestation.

[outbreak]

The question about learning language through genetics is stupid.

The interesting question is how much of our choices\preferences\personalities in life are actually influenced by our genetics and ancestors experiences.

[RidonKs]

The interesting question is how much of our choices\preferences\personalities in life are actually influenced by our genetics and ancestors experiences.
so only unanswerable questions are interesting?

my mom lost her parents in a fire and has since then been terrified of enclosed spaces. you want to ask how that makes me different than... if that hadn't happened? wow, great question dude. good luck getting to the bottom of it.




Language is the ability to symbolize: to use one thing to refer to another and there are multiple inputs which are utilized to create a reference system like sight, sound and touch as mentioned in this thread.
language is not only the ability to symbolize. if it were, we would just walk around pointing at things and saying their name. the language capacity involves fundamental organizing principles that allow complex ideas to be constructed and understood. those principles are amazing because they allow us to end the sentence "john is tired..." in LITERALLY an infinite number of ways. as we deduce further, we will understand more but the truth is that linguistics is in its infancy. think newtonian classical physics. there is a long way to go before we can say anything really fundamental about it.

one thing that should be stressed for people to understand is that language is a system of thought, not a system of communication. it was never "invented". its dawn was almost certainly a spontaneous occurrence in a single individual. which means that presumably we all have a single common ancestor.

[outbreak]

so only unanswerable questions are interesting?

my mom lost her parents in a fire and has since then been terrified of enclosed spaces. you want to ask how that makes me different than... if that hadn't happened? wow, great question dude. good luck getting to the bottom of it.

.

Your a ****ing idiot. It's not about what your mum has done it's about what your ancestors have done thousands of years ago and how different cultures who can trace their roots back to a single region have been studied and have different traits and pre dispositions to other areas. Again, you are a ****ing idiot.

[NumberSix]

so only unanswerable questions are interesting?

my mom lost her parents in a fire and has since then been terrified of enclosed spaces. you want to ask how that makes me different than... if that hadn't happened? wow, great question dude. good luck getting to the bottom of it.
Actually, recent discoveries have in fact shown that if previous generations in your "bloodline" experienced something like a famine or some traumatic event, it does impact your genes.

Genetics aren't as static as we once believed. We used to think you have a set of genes that you pass on that stay the same regardless of what happens in your life, but that turns out to not be the case.

[RidonKs]

Actually, recent discoveries have in fact shown that if previous generations in your "bloodline" experienced something like a famine or some traumatic event, it does impact your genes.

Genetics aren't as static as we once believed. We used to think you have a set of genes that you pass on that stay the same regardless of what happens in your life, but that turns out to not be the case.
that's not what i'm talking about. i don't know what you're talking about. probably you don't know what you're talking about.

[RidonKs]

Your a ****ing idiot. It's not about what your mum has done it's about what your ancestors have done thousands of years ago and how different cultures who can trace their roots back to a single region have been studied and have different traits and pre dispositions to other areas. Again, you are a ****ing idiot.
you mistook my point.

i think linguistics are interesting. it breaks down sentences, the very ones we're using right now, into data points that are then deconstructed and ordered according to how they were cognitively formulated. i know that probably sounds like bullshit jargon but if you think about it, especially if you apply it to stuff like comedy and poetry and rhetorical speech and techniques of persuasion and all that really cool stuff in culture, you get fascinating results.

of course i agree with you that the way human culture is passed down historically is an intensely fascinating topic that i love to discuss as much as anyone. but that has nothing to do with the op, who made a thread about language and learning, a topic you dismissed as uninteresting. so either **** you too you ****ing idiot or you can understand where i'm coming from.

[NumberSix]

that's not what i'm talking about. i don't know what you're talking about. probably you don't know what you're talking about.
I'm not sure what you're asking, but I'll go in this direction.

I don't think language is strictly learned. It's something innate to humans. If we put a bunch of language-less people on an island and just left them there for 1000 years and came back, the people there would have new fully developed language(s).

[DeuceWallaces]

Actually, recent discoveries have in fact shown that if previous generations in your "bloodline" experienced something like a famine or some traumatic event, it does impact your genes.

Genetics aren't as static as we once believed. We used to think you have a set of genes that you pass on that stay the same regardless of what happens in your life, but that turns out to not be the case.

You're just a talking toilet. You never provide any proof or examples.

[RidonKs]

I'm not sure what you're asking, but I'll go in this direction.

I don't think language is strictly learned. It's something innate to humans. If we put a bunch of language-less people on an island and just left them there for 1000 years and came back, the people there would have new fully developed language(s).
good work

[Swaggin916]

It seems as though we are born with an inherent desire to communicate and there is sort of a natural grammar structure that all languages seem to share (as far as I know).

[bladefd]

I believe we have genes and biological means (voice box) that allow us the ability to talk but language itself we learn from our parents and others.

Look up FOX2P. That's a gene that is linked directly to the ability to talk. If that gene is faulty, you may never be able to talk.

Of course, do note that language is not exclusive to the ability to talk. Sounds or even hand signs could be interpreted as language as you can use the tones and signs in different manner to articulate different simple thoughts. Talking is a slightly different term because it refers to the ability to speak and communicate complex thoughts verbally. Biologically we already have genes and organs that allow us to talk but we are not born with languages instilled into us -- those we learn or we can make our own languages.

[KNOW1EDGE]

So OP was serious, holy sh1t, his genes are fuhcking horrible.

[warriorfan]

op was born with a blank skeet