A Girl With a Sword

I think, Linnea, that you should donate any future children to science...throw them on an island and see what happens.

Actually, I was wondering if you meant children that already knew how to speak a native language or children that knew no language to begin with. I think it would be fascinating to study the Mowglis of this world (if they exist) because here we have an example of someone who would have been taught no human language. If he knew any linguistic structures at all, this would demonstrate either 1) these structures are natural or 2) animal communication has a similar structural base.

I am not sure if children can develop a language if left to themselves (i.e., if a bunch of children were thrown on an island with *no* speakers at all), mostly because I don't think they can talk at all unless they are taught. I base this off my stint as a nanny of an adopted 18-month old who was (at the time) just learning how to speak. His speech development was delayed because of the change of language environment (and quite possibly because no one was consciously teaching him words in his former home, the Russian orphanage). It seems to me that in order to learn a native language (let alone develop a creole), children need to be deliberately taught how to speak (Parents or older siblings need to interact with children: "What's this? Ball. Good! Good!").

But then again, I don't know anything about linguistics and thus find this all very fascinating.

I always thought your brother didn't speak very early because he heard confusing language patterns.... That's probably not true, but there's always Chernobyl

having recently just read the biography of sir richard francis burton (1821-1890) I find this fascinating as burton's life as a linguist was always overshadowed by his keen interest in languages even as a boy gowing up in ireland and the continent. take the roma (gypsy) tongue which is 'natural' although i may be missing the point of what you are talking about here, where it seems to me that you are assigning 'natural' to mean local or ordinary or normal, that horribly religious word which means nothing. but what i hope you mean is that its not unusual to be born or to speak in this way as a consequence of some bio-impulse - i think you used the term bioprogram (sounds like a computer)...

The story of wolf boys, etc. shows that the innate language acquisition powers of the human mind must have something to work on if one is to speak.

By "natural" I actually meant based on innate language structure, the kind of language that is not based on a passed-down structure, but whose structure comes just from language-structure instinct. I guess it would be simplest to say that by "natural" I mean "not manufactured." Although, with the development of our languages you could hardly call any of them manufactured.