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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">===========================================<br>
L O W L A N D S - L - 26 January 2009 - Volume 03<span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);"><br>
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<p><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;"><br>
From: <span class="ep8xu"><span style="color: rgb(0, 104, 28);"><a href="mailto:heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk">heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk</a></span></span></span><span class="hccdpe"> </span><span class="ldacoc"><<a href="mailto:heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk">heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk</a>></span><br>
Subject: <span class="hccdpe">LL-L "Language programming" 2009.01.19
(07) [E]<br>
<br>
</span>from Heather Rendall <a href="mailto:heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk" target="_blank">heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk</a></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">Luc wrote</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">PS: Steven Pinker believes
the brain is "programmed" to pick up spoken language easily, but not
"programmed" to learn how to read and write. A human being, he
believes, will generally not spontaneously learn to do so (~ his book: The
Blank Slate).</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">Trust Pinker to say the
bl.......ing obvious and make it sound like sound research.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">Remember how we all laughed
at Tarzan teaching himself to read by means of his building blocks and baby
books!!! Edgar Burroughs ( is that the right author??) actively believed along
with many 19th century people that an intelligent baby would de natura speak
its own mother tongue in the absence of any mother or father or anyone else to
help it.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">I wonder how. Did they
imagine language sitting dormant in a brain waiting for experience to awaken
it? Did it like MInerva spring fully fledged (so to speak) at a given point?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">Of course we cannot
be programmed de natura for reading and writing because both are creations of
man and still not universal experiences. Of course we must be adapting /
adopting some other part of the brain in order to master these learned skills.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">It is interesting that the
FOXP2 gene which appears to have a direct link to sentence sequencing has as
its main (orignal) role the control of fine muscles around the mouth and also
the fingers. By building a sequence of actions with one's fingers to complete a
task, perhaps we might see the beginnings of the order of ideas as we place
them in a sentence.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">I wonder why som many / so
much of Pinker's books grate on my nerves?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;">Heather</span></p>
•
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