Need based language development

A. Katz amnfn at WELL.COM
Wed Dec 4 22:24:08 UTC 2002


>Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 16:07:02 -0500
>From: David Golumbia <dgolumbi at PANIX.COM>
>Subject: Re: Feral children and enculturated apes
>
>Let's ask the question a different way: if homo sapiens were to re-emerge
>in evolution, with exactly the same biology, would their language be "the
>same" as what we know of human language?
>

That's a good question.

>Another variation: put a group of infants into a world that somehow
>provides them everything they need *except language.* Leave them alone for
>50 years. I guarantee you, something will have developed, and whatever it
>is will be human language, and it will be just as hard to cleave
>analytically between what-they-speak and
>what-humans-as-we-know-them-speak.

I don't think that we can guarantee that anything like
language would develop under those circumstances. Life
emerged on this planet only once. All living entities on
earth are related. We have no reason to believe that if we
duplicated the environment, life would necessarily emerge
again. Experiments in that direction have failed. By the
same token, there is no evidence that Language emerged more
than once on earth. How can we be sure that the rise of
language is something we could duplicate?

Also, if all their needs were met automatically, would these
subjects have any reason to come up with language?

    --Aya Katz


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