[Xmca-l] Re: The Ideal and Nicaraguan Sign Language
Andy Blunden
ablunden@mira.net
Tue Oct 14 16:39:13 PDT 2014
Mike, yes, I would like to see your and Sheila's speculations on the
case of Nicaraguan Sign Language.
Two things.
* I think that when a positive developmental principle (e.g. sign-
and tool- use is the essential feature of human development) is
transformed into an absolute "ontological" claim: only humans, not
animals, can use/create signs/tools, it inevitably fails. But the
principle which the claim expresses is not destroyed thereby. It
just turns out to be relative not absolute.
* Nonetheless, it is always enlightening to study in detail the
surprising exceptions to the absolute "ontological" claim, i.e.,
exactly how and under what conditions chimps create/use signs/tools.
So, although I don't believe that NSL disproves the principle Vygotsky
was arguing for, I am sure that an understanding of what took place in
Nicaragua will enlighten us about how language develops normally. It
seems that the "ideal" is not just the language-use itself!
Andy
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
mike cole wrote:
> I suggest that people pause to check out the phenomenon of Nicaraguan
> Sign, and that someone with linguistic sophistication and knowledge of
> the case join the discussion. The
> basic facts can be found
> at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language.
>
> Googling Senghas Nicaraguan Sign Language will turn up a lot. Vygotsy
> seemed to be saying that left to themselves, a group of deaf kids
> would not invent a language. These kids do.
>
> BUT, as Julian (?) pointed out, these kids, while cut off from the
> language of the adults who brought them together (LSV did not specify
> the conditions of such a gathering), even the sign language which was
> Spanish/finger-spelled, literacy derived, they do, OVER GENERATIONSj
> of kids coming to the center, form a more and more complex
> communication system that now,. several generations later, looks a
> whole lot like a normal language.
>
> Where is the ideal form that is the end in the beginning? That is the
> question.
>
> I do not know the answer. However, from other evidence collected by
> Goldin-Meadow and others, I believe that the "ideal form" a culturally
> organized form of life IS there at the beginning for the kids in their
> social environment, including the organization of their own joint
> activities together outside of the purview of adults. This latter
> interpretation is discussed in a textbook by wife and I wrote and
> elsewhere. I can send the summary of that bit of amateur
> speculation/inference if the topic of the centrality of the end being
> in the beginning, and LSV's analysis of that topic in the article we
> are reading, is of interest.
>
> LSV is not "proven wrong" by this case. The complexity of the issue,
> however, is certainly easier to grasp.
> mike
> PS-- There is fascinating work by my colleague, Carol Padden, on
> another such case in the Negev desert that is a few generations old
> and for which the entire genetic mapping from the initial deaf
> originator as the language grows and spreads in the community is part
> of the research. The grammar of the language is unlike either Hebrew
> or Arabic, the two languages that exist in the environment of these
> people.
>
> On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 7:08 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>
> How would you explain then, Carol, how the Nicaraguan children
> managed to acquire such a sophisticated language in a couple of
> generations?
> Are elements of language implicit in social practices? How does it
> happen?
> Andy
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
>
>
> Carol Macdonald wrote:
>
> Hi
>
> I am sorry it took me so long to read the post - I am with
> Tomasello on this. I don't think this is evidence for LAD. The
> LAD has very specific reference to universal parameters, and
> the history of theoretical linguistics in the last 55 years
> or so has had to step back and back to parameter setting so
> the "universals" are more and more abstract. Perhaps a
> linguist on the site could resolve what they are now.
> Phonology has the most developed set. And how does this
> relate to communication per se? Can anybody help? Even the
> notion of verb-ness and noun-ness as universals are contested.
>
> Pidgins arise when people have a need to communicate; then
> they become creoles. The children and their caretakers had
> such a need. We have no idea how abstract, or signified, when
> this first began.
>
> In South Africa this happened when mineworkers from all over
> South Africa needed to have a common form of communication.
> It has never developed to a creole, because the speakers have
> their own Bantu languages, and the need underground is so
> specific and restricted that there has been no further
> development.
>
> ISN has had a very strong motivation to develop. Creoles do
> become languages - Jamaican is a case in point. In my
> situation, Afrikaans can be regarded as creoloid, where the
> mother language - Dutch has been simplified. The Afrikaners
> historically has access to the Bible in High Dutch, but we
> know the Bible deals with a wide range of concepts, so
> Afrikaans has had to take on board scientific concepts. There
> is generally a "correct" Afrikaans term, and a related word
> which can be regarded as closer to English. Both are included
> in their lexicon. The latter characteristic is part of
> language planning/development per se.
>
> Perhaps I have seen so much in a multi-linguistic environment,
> that I see this as more fluid. I think this is enough for me
> now - can someone respond?
>
> Carol
>
> On 14 October 2014 02:46, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net
> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>> wrote:
>
> Mike has drawn our attention to the Nicaraguan Sign Language
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language
> as a counter-example to Vygostsky's claim:
>
> "that if no appropriate ideal form can be found in the
> environment,
> and the development of the child, for whatever reasons,
> has to take
> place outside these specific conditions (described
> earlier), i.e.
> without any interaction with the final form, then this
> proper form
> will fail to develop properly in the child."
>
> In my opinion, this once-in-human-history event does not
> invalidate the principle Vygotsky was elaborating. Just
> like every
> attempt to say what distinguishes the human being from the
> animal
> seems to be faulted by the latest clip from YouTube, all such
> absolute claims are almost bound to fail at some point.
> But the
> principle, illustrated by the fact that children growing up in
> Russia speak Russian and understand the meaning of
> perezhivanie
> whereas we don't, etc., is hardly faulted by NSL.
>
> The other thing that Mike suggests is that the principle
> of the
> ideal being present in the environment carries with it the
> negation of the idea of the social formation itself being
> subject
> to continuous change. Again, I think Vygotsky just takes
> this as
> outside the concerns of Psychology. His essay on Socialist Man
>
> http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/1930/socialism.htm
> shows that in fact he saw the psychology of people as
> primarily
> determined by the social formation of which they were a
> part and
> he saw that social formation as evolving. He was of course a
> modern, albeit I suspect a modern with a considerable
> capacity for
> irony.
>
> Now, this raises the difficult question of what Vygotsky
> may have
> meant by "ideal." Or, what he thought is a mystery, but what
> should *we* understand by ideality? It is well known that
> Vygotsky
> was surrounded by a number of fellows who were aficionados of
> Hegelianism, even if Vygotsky himself had never studied
> Hegel, so
> it is fair to suggest that the Hegelian concept of the
> Ideal is
> relevant in this context, of reconciling "ideal" as the
> norm in a
> given social formation and "ideal" as the notion of infinite,
> historical perfectability. For Hegel, "ideality" expresses
> both
> these principles; that is, that any relation contains
> within it a
> "gap" which makes it open to perfectability, and that "gap" is
> ever present, and its existence expresses what Hegel calls The
> Idea, that is to say, the ever-unfolding spirit of human
> freedom.
> Etc. It only requires that the Idea is present for any
> relation to
> be mutable. This is deep and challenging philosophical
> stuff which
> we don't really need, if we can just accept that "the
> ideal" does
> not mean something fixed and final, just an evolving norm:
> ever-shifting goal posts.
>
> Andy
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Carol A Macdonald Ph D (Edin)
> Developmental psycholinguist
> Academic, Researcher, and Editor Honorary Research Fellow:
> Department of Linguistics, Unisa
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal with a natural science with an
> object that creates history. Ernst Boesch.
>
>
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