Natural Language
 

This may not be the type of thing you guys like to talk about but I love this kind of thing. And I especially love that my kids think like this as well.

On the way to church my daughter posed a question.

She said... I wonder if there is a natural language that we would speak if we were not taught a language growing up?

Now that is a pretty good question.

I don't know how much it would resemble what we view as language but I have feeling that there would be some sort of language that would come to pass because we would find a way to communicate. We would find words or utterances to symbolize certain things and we would communicate in that manner.

She also wondered how much it would resemble our languages. I think it might have some occasional resemblances to at least the older languages because many languages have similar words for the same item although I am aware that often this is because one language adapts a word from another language.

Anyway... this is the type of thing I like to ponder.

Any thoughts?

Re: Natural Language
 

Wouldn't it be like the communication of the people that have been found wandering in the wilderness, or shut up in basements?

The stories I've heard like that, there is some type of guttural communication. The woman and children who were kept in that basement by that horrific man, they communicated with each other, but it didn't sound like the way we speak.

It'd be interesting to know if all of these different people could communicate with each other. The wilderness people, basement people, etc. If there is a universal code.

Re: Natural Language
 

Yes ma'am...

This is the type of thing I find very interesting. I am sure there is an amazing human capacity to communicate with one another.

We find a way to do what we need and we truly need to communicate. Not only from a practical standpoint but also for the facilitation of relationship etc.

Re: Natural Language
 

It would be an interesting experiment to place a group of monolingual people on a deserted island, with languages as different from each other as possible...Mandarin, Swahili, Russian, a native american indian...etc. And see how they learned to communicate.

Hey! Think I could make lots of money by pitching that as a reality show??? :D

Re: Natural Language
 

Well if you do... throw a brotha a bone alright? :)

Re: Natural Language
 

I can't remember who, but someone was just discussing this within the last week. They said there was a study done (early 70s?) where a group of toddlers was cared for but not spoken to. The kids grew for several years without language. They grunted and pointed and gesticulated but never did develop a natural language of their own. I can't find any reference to the study they referred to, but here is an interesting link: http://www.feralchildren.com/en/language.php

This doesn't mean that language wouldn't develop over a period of years.

IMO, I suspect that language would never develop as we know it. Words would probably be much simpler. (what person, never having experienced language, is going to make up "supercallafragilasticexpialadocious," after all?) A more advanced sentence structure and abstract terms would take years if not decades or centuries to develop in a vacuum.

Here is another website about language development experiments and sentence fragmenting (the ability to distinguish separate words in the midst of a sentence-my problem with comprehending spoken spanish) http://www.apa.org/monitor/sep06/words.html

Re: Natural Language
 

Would basement people and wilderness people even want to communicate with each other? Or would they be intimidated or distrustful of each other, having lived so long in isolation from other humans?

Re: Natural Language
 

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/langu...es/000078.html

Late in the 16th century, the Mogul emperor Akbar the Great tested his hypothesis that babies raised without hearing speech would be unable to speak. He had twelve infants raised by mute nurses in a house where no speech could be heard. Several years later, he went to the house and found that none of the children spoke. Instead, they conversed only in signs. Akbar's hypothesis seemed to be supported: no oral input, no oral language language learning.

Re: Natural Language
 

I think your point is valid in a situation where people where knowingly held by others. But the scenario that would show some results would be where they were isolated but had no idea that this was anything but their natural situation.

Re: Natural Language
 

But it (language) did develop, didn't it? I mean, we are walking talking examples of it. Which means that it would probably start out very rudimentary but would be refined over thousands of subsequent generations until it approached something like we know it today.