David,
Tomasello does a terrific job in Cultural Origins, but I don't see it as an
alternative to innatism. When Chomsky talks of an innate "language faculty",
he proposes that its "maturation" - during a certain "critical" period -
depends on the exposure of the child to the proper environmental settings
(for the latest exposition, cf. "New Horizons in the Study of Language and
Mind", Cambridge UP, 2000). As far as I can tell, such concepts as "joint
attentional scenes" and "social-pragmatic cues", as discussed by Tomasello,
actually contribute to our understanding of the interactional and cognitive
aspects involved in the acquisition of a particular language - seen as a
concrete instantiation of the innate "language faculty". Please correct me
if I'm wrong.
As regards your questions about the general topic, I have to admit that I'm
still in a very early phase of my investigations. But just to give you an
example concerning "logotechniques" and digital media, I have a strong
interest in analyzing the relationship of video and computer games to
society at large. Such games could be thought of as the result of processes
of "world design" - what could be, in some sense, traced back to tabletop
games, especially in the strategic and role-playing variety. This line of
research could be extended to encompass the developments in fields such as
Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life.
That's it for the moment. Rgrds,
Luiz Carlos Baptista
lucabaptista@sapo.pt
lucabaptista@hotmail.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Preiss" <david.preiss@yale.edu>
To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: segunda-feira, 29 de Setembro de 2003 23:59
Subject: Re: research - writing, printing, computing
> Luiz,
>
> Michael Tomasello in The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition offers an
> interesting alternative to innatism in the acquisition of language, which
> also fits indirectly your claims. Bruner in Child's talk do the same. And
> before, of course, Vygotsky. As for the general topic, my question will be
> how do we move beyond what we know so far, what research strategies we
> should pursue, what are the open questions we still have to answer when
> doing research on literacy and cognition, and how do we translate those
> questions in an empirical program of research.
>
> David
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Luiz Carlos Baptista" <lucabaptista@sapo.pt>
> To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Sent: Monday, September 29, 2003 6:42 PM
> Subject: Re: research - writing, printing, computing
>
>
> > These are very good points. Here I follow closely the position of David
R.
> > Olson in his book "The World on Paper": we have writing when we have
> scripts
> > with syntax. This includes, for instance, numerical and musical
notations.
> > In this sense, if Stonehenge and the Lascaux calendars were tokens of a
> > syntactical system, they indeed could be called "logotechniques". But I
> > really don't know enough about them. The key moment here, and again I
take
> > it from Olson, is when human beings start _reading texts_, instead of
> > "simply" seeing/describing images.
> >
> > As regards language, however, I stick to the good old fashioned "innate
> > endowment" hypothesis.
> >
> >
> > Luiz Carlos Baptista
> > lucabaptista@sapo.pt
> > lucabaptista@hotmail.com
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Mike Cole" <mcole@weber.ucsd.edu>
> > To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> > Sent: segunda-feira, 29 de Setembro de 2003 22:11
> > Subject: Re: research - writing, printing, computing
> >
> >
> > > Luiz-- Why wouldn't Stonehenge or lunar calandars from Lascaux not
count
> > > as logtechniques? And why not language itself?
> > > mike
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
>
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Oct 01 2003 - 01:00:08 PDT