Linguistic Development Research Paper Page 9
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374 WHAT IS IT THAT DEVELOPS?
9
In English in an active sentence the noun which precedes the verb names the doer of the action.
The noun which follows it names the object of that action. The sentence:
* Jim John hit
violates the rules of word ordering for English and consequently is deemed ungrammatical,
although it would not be so in France. The interactions between the rules of syntax for a
language and the meanings of the morphemes of the language that are in the sentence help
the language user to deduce the combined meaning of the sentence.
pragmatics is the knowledge, independent of semantics and syntax etc, of what kind of response
would be appropriate in a given social situation. For example one would not communicate
very well if one covered ones mouth with ones hand. Similarly if one preceded a sentence with
”now listen here my man...” one would have the same effect, thus pragmatics is the knowledge
of the social complications of communication.
4.1
The Communication Chain
The idea of the communication chain comes from Information theory. The communication chain con-
tains the following links: transmitter, encoder, transmission medium, decoder, and receiver. There
are parallels between each of these mathematical models and physical counterparts in the human
body. We can see that human speech makes more than a little use of the ideas from cybernetics and
information theory. For instance, when we speak we rely heavily on cybernetic feedback in order to
communicate effectively. If we don’t know where our tongues are we tend not to be able to articulate
effectively (as anyone whose been to the dentist lately will know!)
Similarly, we need feedback on the progress of our speech through bone conduction through the
skull. Researchers have found that if they use a delay mechanism to relay speech to the ear later
than normal (so called delayed auditory feedback ) we begin to stutter, and slur our speech and final
end up stopping altogether.
The same principles apply to all parts of the speech apparatus. The Cerebellum and Basal Ganglia
need tactile feedback and the auditory system needs vocal feedback, we also need pragmatic feedback
too. If we were speaking to someone on the telephone and they made no sound we would begin to
falter and stop, hence the “mhm”, “I see” and “yes” used so often in conversation. We need
pragmatic feedback to see whether the speech is having the desired effect on the listener as well.
4.1.1
The Brain
When trying to understand language development we are faced with a number of problems that
would tax the ingenuity even of Hercules. Language by virtue of its fluidity is almost impenetrable
to introspection. Everything happens so smoothly and quickly, we have no way of knowing what
goes on when we speak. And children, aside from being fairly unreliable witnesses are fundamentally
incapable of linguistic introspection of any kind until the developmental process is nearly over.
Therefore the kinds of experiments which are required to gain some insight into language development
have to be either superficial, as with the diary studies, or must be roundabout in their approach. If
an experiment is not direct there may be a number of different explanations for its results. That is
the case in developmental linguistics.
The majority of work is descriptive, and it is only latterly with the aid of Nuclear Magnetic Res-
onance, Computer Aided Tomography and Positron Emission Tomography scanners that we are
learning anything of the neural architecture involved with language. Such scanners are still not able
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