novelty, Heraclitus, and children

[Brian MacWhinney]

I think that Aya Katz is correct in noting that "The possibility of `novel
sentences' is built into any abstract code that carries information,
regardless of how that code came into being, or what devices are used in
order
to interpret it."  The problem is even more general that that.  As
Heraclitus reminds us, "You could not step twice into the same rivers, for
other waters are ever flowing on to you."  Does this lead us to attribute
creativity and novelty to rivers?  Surely something is missing in any such
analysis.  I would agree  with Householder that the claim of novelty is so
obvious that it is surprising that it is even made.  After all, even a
finite state machine can produce many "novel" strings and no one would jump
up and down about a language instinct on the basis of knowing that language
is a finite state automaton.

At the same time, Ellen Prince and Dan Slobin are correct in pointing out
the importance of something close to this issue for child language
acquisition.  I would argue that the type of novelty that is really
interesting for child language researchers is something very different from
what has been mentioned in this discussion so far.  It is the fact that
children often produce sound strings, words, and utterances that diverge in
revealing ways from the norms of the adult community.  What is crucial is
not novelty, but the failure to fully internalize or obey social norms.
These errors demonstrate that the child is making his or her independent
contribution to the language learning process. In this sense, "errors" such
as "I poured my glass empty" reveal creative aspects of language learning.
For each creative error there are probably eight creative productions that
just happen to match the social norms.

Bolinger's view of language as built up from disparate pieces helps us out
here.  The child has one piece called "go" and another piece called "past
tense = ed" and just doesn't remember that the socially sanctioned way of
saying this is "went".  It is this creativity that demonstrates a lack of
full internalization of the social norms and which also gives us some of our
best evidence regarding how the child learns and uses language.

--Brian MacWhinney