April 9, 2001

The readings for this class were:

• Whitney, Chapter 11

The outline for the class is:

1. Announcements
2. Questions
3. Syntax (quick review)
   • at 12 months, holophrases
   • at 15 months, multiple words - multiple stress
   • about 15 - 24 months, multiple words - single stress
   • about 15 - 24 months, telegraphic speech
   • about 24 - 30 months, complex syntax (clauses)
4. Language Bioprogram Hypothesis
   • pidgins
     • rudimentory speech system, extremely impoverished in syntax and vocabulary
     • contact language
     • characteristics: variability, difficult (though possible) to express anything expressible in creole or English because it lacks building blocks:

       "Sometime good road get, sometime, all same bend get, enguru 
       [angle] get, no? Any kind same. All same human life, all same."
       
       "Sometimes there's a good road, sometimes there's, like, bends, 
       corners, right? Everything's like that. Human life's just like 
       that."
       
       or
       
       "You see, I got wood there. Plenty men here no job, come steal."
       
       single clauses, no connectors, missing verbs, no tense or aspect.
       
       or
       
       
       "No can. I try hard get good ones. Before, plenty duck. 
       Now, no more."
       
       missing subjects, connectors, single clauses.
       

     • Mauritius example
   • creoles
     • expansion of pidgin - children lacking a consistent linguistic model invent a language!
     • Hawaiian creole - recent, so reconstruction of origins is possible
     • progression:
       • Hawaiian contact with Europeans goes back to 1778
       • beginning in 1876, sugar fields boomed (700% increase), based on a revision of US tariff laws allowing th efree importaion of Hawaiian sugar
       • by 1900, a polyglot indentured workforce outnumbers others (Hawaiian and European) by a ratio of 2:1
       • US annexes Hawaii in 1898, Hawaiian replaced by English
       • pidgin Hawaiian replaced by pidgin English after 1900
       • creolization underway by 1900, completed by 1920
     • creole utterances:

       "You bin say go up on roof and paint him but I no hear you 
       say come down. 
       
       "You told me to go up on the roof and paint it but I didn't 
       hear you say to come down."
       
       or 
       
       "Those people say one man what belong that church bin go see
       on kahuna down Kakaako."
       
       "Those people said that a man who belongs to that church had
       gone to see a kahuna."
       
       note: embedded structure
       

     • evidence for continuum of creoles based on "primitiveness" which correlates with historical demographic predictions.
     • since invented in isolation, it is likely that some general ability common to all peole is responsible for the linguistic similarities.
     • would suggest there is a language easier to learn than another, creole!
     • so why don't children learn creole between the ages of 2 and 4?
     • signed language as a creole?
       • Nicaragua, 1979, schools for the deaf opened; no common signing system, all used home sign.
       • LSN - pidgin among signers (59 signs/min; no spatial inflection)
       • ISN - full-blown sign language (74 signs/min; spatial inflections)
       • age matters; younger than 7 years create ISN from LSN, older signers couldn't
5. Examination #2

Digressions/Miscellaneous

• Gullah
• SignWriting
• Creation through contact: Sign language emergence and sign language change in Nicaragua by J. Kegl, A. Senghas, and M. Coppola, 1999, in Language Creation and Language Change: Creolization, Diachrony and Development ed. M. DeGraff, MIT Press.

Overhead Notes

1. rule 1: put NO or NOT in front of sentence
   	No want stand head
   	No play that
   rule 2: put negative after 1st NP
   	He no bite you
   	I can't catch you
   rule 3: put negative in the 3rd slot after noun and
   	auxilliary or copula and before rest of sentence
   	Paul can n't have one
   	I am not a doctor
   	I did n't spill it
   rule 4: as rule 3, but with tense included only once
   	You didn't caught me -> You didn't catch me
   

2. Sarah and the -ing rule proficiency

   Age	% correct usage
   2 yrs	50%
   2 yrs 6 mo	20%
   2 yrs 7 mo	80%
   2 yrs 8 mo	45%
   3+ yrs	100% and steady

Parting Thoughts

• Read Whitney, Chapter 12
• Read Speech-like cerebral activity in profoundly deaf people processing signed languages: Implications for the neural basis of human language by L. A. Petitto, R. J. Zatorre, K. Gauna, E. J. Nikelski, D. Dostie, and A. C. Evans, 2000, PNAS, 97(25):13961-13966.

Self-test Questions

• Outline the most important evidence for the existence of one or more critical periods in language acquisition. Next, contrast two different interpretations of this evidence. Is it possible to explain the data without appealing to a nativist view of language acquisition?
• Compare the situations faced by a child reared in an environment in which a pidgin is the dominant langauge with the situation faced by a deaf child born to parents who know no sign language. Does either of these situations provide convincing evidence in support of a nativist view of language acquisition? Explain.
• Explain the concept of a double dissociation. What evidence have you learned about that that represents the strongest case for a double dissociation between language and more general cognitive abilities? Justify your answer.
• Studies of children with specific language impairment, Williams syndrome, and Down syndrome have been interpreted as showing a dissociation between language and cognition. WHat are the problems with such a strong interpretation of these data? Give an example of how a more fine grained analysis of the abilities have weakened the support for a strongly nativist view.