C. Darwin Goranson:
> I myself think that looking at chimps might be a
> good start, [...]
Or any animal. Your pet ###### spaniel will also do.
The very fact that a dog can register commands is
a clue that language is not isolated amongst humans.
With my dog (who passed away of old age, sigh), it
didn't seem to matter how I said a command. He was a
pretty bright terrier and he could actually understand
a sentence, regardless of intonation, emphasis, etc.
I tested him once by saying in a soft voice, "You
know, Spot, maybe you should get down off that couch."
And he did it! That's what convinced me that there's
much more going on in a dog's brain than the average
human being cares to acknowledge.
> or (FAR more controversial) isolating somenewborn
> children in a lab [...]
Yes, I do believe there are laws against that in
Canada, the US and Mexico at least :P
> Even if the children never spoke, the simple motions
> of reference would begin to emerge.
Actually, I know that they already have done some
studies on children raised in mixed sign/speech
households (where one parent speaks in sign, the other
with voice) and found that the learning of signing
starts slightly earlier than speech but is learned in
the same way as speech, starting first with "babbling"
and moving on to more complex hand gestures based on
those simpler movements from the babbling stage.
I'm sure there's a link to that somewhere online.
There always is.
= gLeN
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