The mother's drinking and drug use probably damaged the neurological capacities of your daughters - and your caring and loving teaching enabled them to deal with these biological problems in a constructive manner. As you say, language or rather learning to use language well did not repair the damage done in embryo but it did enable them to work around it.
I think you have a strong argument - that syntactic development in socioeconomically deprived areas might, yes, economically help the children there. Why? Because syntax is a logical format, establishing logical relations between X and Y. Your examples of teaching relationships fits into this - and establishing logical connections enables a child to anticipate results...If I do this, THEN, this might occur. IF I don't want to live this way, THEN, I must do this and this and this. Above all, it's all about relations and interactions. I can remember long homework assignments in Latin and English, marking out the nouns, verbs, adverbs and so on, and their relations - and understanding such a logical framework slides over into understanding that such a framework exists in daily life as well. Edwina ----- Original Message ----- From: Phyllis Chiasson To: Edwina Taborsky Cc: Gary Moore ; Søren Brier ; [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2014 5:18 PM Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Japan? Language & cognition? Listers, Although I know well that 'anecdote' is not singular for 'data,' I might have some experience to contribute to this discussion. We have 5 grown children (our youngest is 40). All three of our girls are adopted. The oldest was adopted at birth; the other 2 (half sisters) were adopted together, at 13mo and 3 yrs. The younger was born with medical issues, but never given to the mother. The 3 year old had bounced back and forth between mother, hospital, foster home, mother...etc. Some of her medical problems were due to abuse & neglect; others due to recurrent ear infections from which she still has some hearing loss. She seemed quite feral to us. She made sounds but had no expressive language when we got her, other than violent temper tantrums-which were quite expressive. As a speech/language arts teacher fond of structural grammar, I believed that the invisible words designating relationships might help her gain some facility with language. We began playing a preposition game for which I would say something like: 'Stand NEXT TO the table' etc. Then we played adverbs of time, connectives etc. Once she learned the prepositional relationships, she would send me to various places. Same with other relationship words. Hers was not a quick transformation, but within a year she was communicating well enough to make her needs clear. Many unusual cognitive connections emerged from her during this language learning time. Her vocabulary and sentence structure became (and is) impressive. Unfortunately, we learned from a savy doc, who managed to locate their birth records when they were both in elementary school, that their birth mother drank and used cocaine during both pregnancies. Both sisters suffered cognitive and physical damage, but the older one is most significantly impaired. She cannot read or do math. However she has the vocabulary and sentence structure of a high functioning college graduate. She lives independently and, with the help of a payee, manages her own affairs. She married (ex husband, who has custody, has poor grammar etc.) and had two children. Both children speak perfect English. Her son was identified as math gifted in 2nd grade. He is in various honors and AP classes in HS (he will be with us at Lowell). Her daughter is clever with language and a delightful writer. Learning to speak well did not 'fix' either of these daughters. However, it has enabled them to fit in with a wide variety of people and to transfer their language abilities to the children, who are able to do well in academic pursuits. Our daughters live near each other and help each other see to it that their visitation times with the kids are enriching experiences. The younger, who can read for literal content, helps her older sister with electronics & paperwork. They are both delighted that the older daughter's children are comparable to the (mostly gifted) children of their other three (non-genetically related) siblings. It seems to be some sort of vindication for them. I am of the experience-based belief that language development may not make one smarter, but it does make one able to fit into a culture that can lift the next generation. I wonder what we might find if we focused upon syntactical development of young people in deprived socionomic groups and then tracked the successes (or failures) of their children. Our family's experience may be a one-off or it may be an anomaly worthy of an abductive inference and a retroductive study. Regards, Phyllis Edwina Taborsky <[email protected]> wrote: I have a problem, Gary Moore, with your focus on 'punishments' in language learning. Perhaps this is just the vocabulary that you are using but I don't think that language learning is based around rewards and punishments which is a reactive (Secondness) and mechanical process. I think that language, in itself, is a primary attribute of our species in that it enables us to THINK referentially and reflectively about our surroundings. That is, the individual on his own, will 'live' within a language, even an idiosyncratic one, that enables him to interact with his world. Second, since we are a social species, then language enables us to not merely communicate with others but to actually develop the society-as-an-active-infrastructure. It is this societal infrastructure that stores the knowledge base of that community and our knowledge is stored within language. So, there are three functions of language in my outline above: the function of thinking is enabled by language; the function of building a societal infrastructure; and..the function of communication with others. Edwina ----- Original Message ----- From: Gary Moore To: Søren Brier ; [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2014 3:12 PM Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Japan? "Children who interact mainly with other children their own age have been known to develop their own languages ‘from scratch’ with no instruction from adults -- languages sufficient to enable them to communicate (with each other) and reason at a high level. This sometimes happens with twins in spite of their parents’ efforts to teach them the language of the home." -x- "From scratch" necessarily means no interaction whatsoever from adults wherein they can convey any sense whatsoever of any instruction for any response whatsoever. If there is any "model" of interaction whatsoever given from adults, especially with rewards or punishments attached AS PERCEIVED BY THE CHILD, NOT THE ADULT, then adults, in one manner or other, voluntarily or involuntarily, are instructing the children in "proper" response for the child to gain whatever the child wants or rejects. And " in spite of their parents’ efforts to teach them the language of the home", consciously and deliberately, does not take into account the usual and additional methods of teaching which, in the common household, means delivering contradictory verbal versus nonverbal 'messages' to the child. Few people seem to take into account how the child sees all of their experience of adults - especially those things they 'cannot' "understand" but are done openly and necessarily must convey - something - to the child. -x- What does this have to do with Peirce? I do not know directly. But, obviously, especially if he knew about Freud and the "speaking cure", it would have deeply interested him if brought to his attention. Does anyone have suggestions? On Wednesday, June 4, 2014 10:12 AM, Søren Brier <[email protected]> wrote: Hej Per Jeg fik slet ikke hørt hvordan Japan rejsen gik? Jeg håber at være rask nok til at komme tirsdag. Tillykke med at så mange har meldt sig til. Er det her rigtig, som jeg samlede op på Peirce-listen? It’s apparently true that “A child absolutely left on its own will never have language beyond Umberto Eco's "Latratus canis". But it’s not necessarily true that “It is someone already knowledgeable in communicative human language that must teach them.” Children who interact mainly with other children their own age have been known to develop their own languages ‘from scratch’ with no instruction from adults -- languages sufficient to enable them to communicate (with each other) and reason at a high level. This sometimes happens with twins in spite of their parents’ efforts to teach them the language of the home. The origin of language is a very deep and still controversial question, but I think recent research has emphasized the evolutionary continuity between human mentality (including communication and reasoning) and the mentality of other animals. One book I’d recommend on this is The Origins of Meaning (Language in the Light of Evolution) by James R. Hurford (2007) KENDER DU DEN?. It’s one of Stjernfelt’s sources in his new book, and it brings together logic, linguistics, psychology and evolutionary biology in a remarkable way that strikes me as quite Peircean although he doesn’t mention Peirce. (Sorry, folks, there’s that word again … ) Venlig hilsen Søren Brier Professor mso, IBC. CBS http://cybersemiotics.dk/ ----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. 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