Date: Tue, 2 Dec 1997 11:35:58 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199712021635.LAA21887@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: 5 year old's language X-To: bob@rattlesnake.com X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 5818 X-From-Space-Date: Tue Dec 2 11:36:28 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU >This is not quite on topic, but very interesting: > >lojbab wrote: > > Russian, I speak fluently to 5 year olds, and cannot understand > much of what adults say unless they are talkingh to 5 year olds > (the difference between 5 year old language and adult language is > so drastic, based on my experience that i am close to arguing that > the whole poverty of the stimulus/language acquisition dispute is > a red hgerring and 5 years olds do not really uderstand the same > language adults do - but that is another debate) > >Please tell us more. >K. Egan suggests that 5 year olds think `mythically', that is, >with major use of metaphor (and employing powerful abstract concepts >that children already understand). I question whether children "understand" any abstract concepts in the sense that adults use the word "understand". My argument is based on a few key points: - children acquire vocabulary steadily throughout childhood, but by age 5-6 really do not have nearly the vocabulary that adults do. - there is a significant difference between passive understanding of a word (which means being able to understand a sentence that uses the word even if you cannot define the word yourself, so it is even less than "recognition" as defined by LogFlash, for example), and the ability to actively use a word in normal language use - children (and adults for that matter) USE correct grammar, but do not REQUIRE correct grammar in order to understand. Thus correct grammar is probably a question of efficiency in processing or "fitting in" more than it is a question of understanding. In Russian, this is particularly true because it has been reported that Russian kids do not master all the case system of Russian till as late as age 10. - the infant brain has twice the synapses of the adult brain, even though it of coursehas not and is not subkjected to nearly the range of sensory or cognitive stimuli that adults receive. They also are expending less brain power on "everyday living". hence it is reasonably believable that a child of age 2 is thinking with 2-3 times the brain power about language inputs received than an adult hearing the same thing. yet the child is not even speaking yet 9and this is assuming that brain power is linearly based on synapses, whereas it could easily be exponential). -observing my kids in their first year or two here (ages 5-7) when they could not engage in normal conversation in English, I observed that they first picked up a few words and set idioms that had strong meanings (OK, careful, stop) and almost immediately after - the popular idioms of the mass culture (I will refrain from repeating the Barney Song, but also "Go Go Power Rangers".) I contend that they did not understand the words of these idioms, nor necessarily the meanings of the idioms as phrases. Rather they seemed to identify the contexts in which the idioms could appropriately be said. I suspect that the first language use is just that - learning to say certain things in certain contexts. After this my kids learned a lot of nouns and a few verbs, and most of their usage consisted of permutations of these words. But every once in a while my kids (especially my son) would throw in a "big word" and use it CORRECTLY. yet upon talking to him, he did not really know what the word meant. In 1st grade he could tell me all about emperor penguins, in complete grammatical sentences, but he could not understand some of the words used in contexts unrealted to emperor penguins. I have therefore come to think that vocabulary acquisition at younger ages is "partial" - they know what the words mean in a limited number of contexts, but need much more language experience before they can handle the polysemy of adult language. As supporting evidence, I note that my kidstook around 3 years in this country before they could understand my incessant punning, but havbe taken until the last few months before they first made their own intentional puns. Meanwhile, to elaborate briefly on my Russian background, I estimate that I have around a 3000 word Russian vocabulary (which is also around what I have in Lojban BTW - seems to be a plateau point for me). MY active vocabulary is much lower in Russian than that passive total, and perhaps a third of that vocabulary I would not recognize in speech unless it occurred in a context that brought the word/concept to mind (example is that the words for squirrel and fork are similar, and I would have considerable toruble keeping them straight in, say, LogFlash. But my 5 year old while eating would not ask me to give him a squirrel! %^) I think my own experience with words like squirrel and fork are not all that unlike those of children learning language, and indeed I think my success in learning Russian to the level I did was because I adopted a childlike attitude to learning from my kids based on the limited vocabulary I had acquired through study, and generally did not worry about my grammar (which was atrocious - a friend calls my Russian the LeChevalier dialect of pidgin Russian - yet I communicate well with young kids that have never been exposed to my "dialect"). I fugure this is more than enough for a Lojban List audience unless someone other than Bon asks questions, though you are welcome Bob to continue with me in off-list email. lojbab ---- lojbab lojbab@access.digex.net Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: ftp.access.digex.net /pub/access/lojbab or see Lojban WWW Server: href="http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/" Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.