Tee+Slobin+paper

First, I agree with some of the others in the class in regard to the language used in the article. Who writes, "Does linguistic diachrony recapitulate ontogeny"? The only thing I initially gathered from that statement is that the writer probably doesn't date much.

In any event, I first went through the article with dictionary.com defining the many terms that were new to me. Even then, stringing long definitions together didn't always translate into a clear definition of the sentence.

1. Does ontogeny recapitulate phylogeny? Ontogeny = the development of an indvidual species or the development or developmental history of an individual organism. Recapitulate = (of an organism) to repeat (ancestral evolutionary stages) in its development. Phylogeny = the development or evolution of a particular group of organisms.

Later in the article Slobin rewords this question to a more understandable one. Can child language provide clues about the evolutionary orgins of the human language capacity (or the orgins of a proto-language)? Slobin answered this question by citing two studies, one with Korean children and the other with Turkish children. The Korean study showed that the language of infants is greatly influenced by their culture and environment. The Turkish study showed that toddlers do not exhibit a reliance on word order or traces of a proto-language. Therefore showing that there is probably little connection between how infants learn language and the existence of a proto-language.

2. Does diachrony recapitulate ontogeny?

Diachrony = change or development in a linguistic system over a period of time. Recapitulate = (of an organism) to repeat (ancestral evolutionary stages) in its development. Ontogeny = the development of an indvidual species or the development or developmental history of an individual organism.

Slobin redefines this question thusly, "Do patterns of historical change of existing languages mirror the ways in which children aquire existing languages (and also a nod towards children changing the language)"? Cleary, if one has been around small childen at all one know that they do not influence, in any great way, the existing language, in fact, the reverse is true. While there are minor influences from small children to their parents, (potty, doggie, nana, childlike nicknames, etc) these words tend to disappear from both the child and the parent usage as the child grows. Teenagers conversly, create and/or promote many new words, some which stick (cool) and some that don't (rad).

Slobin cites a study of English past tense in which small children were observed in their use of verbs. Many of the children used verbs incorrectly, telled, drived, breaked, etc, on a regular basis, yet none have made their way into standard English. Slobin concludes by saying that this study suggests that children are not the ones that language forward and that the immature leaner does not serve as an appropriate model of the process of change.

3. Can children create grammar?

Slobin says that yes they do, but within limits. They seem to fall more into the mode of helping the process along rather than to create it. He cites a study in which homesign children made some of their own signs, but in general, these homesigns never develop into a full human language.