RE: [xmca] Ildefonso

["Eijck, M.W. van" <m.w.v.eijck@tue.nl>]

Yes, that is very interesting indeed. He was trying to figure out the "something that was going on." All the codes, patterns, and signs were abracadabra for him but he was aware that there was an abracadabra which he tried to figure out. So in some way he was aware the meaning of meaning.

Michiel
________________________________________
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of mike cole [lchcmike@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, October 29, 2010 6:20 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] Ildefonso

That's a great summary, Michiel. I agree. This case is very instructively
interesting. The not knowing about sound part was familiar to me through
reading Padden and Humphries, *Deaf in America* which has an entire chapter
on the role of sound among deaf signers and little kids
growing up in family circumstances where "sound" was not a relevant
distinction.

What stands out for me is the "he knew something was going on" part. He was
incorporated in culturally mediated human activities, the "morphology" of
which has been warped by culture. For
this person, that degree of vraschivanie seems sufficient to understanding
he was dealing with intentional creatures and to have some way of
abstracting culturally inflected patterns of
interaction from the flow.

thanks.
mike

On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 8:13 AM, Eijck, M.W. van <m.w.v.eijck@tue.nl> wrote:

> XMCAers,
>
> Have you heard about Susan Schaller's story of Ildefonso, A Man Without
> Words?
>
> http://www.conversations.org/story.php?sid=200
>
> It is a story absolutely stunning! Read it if you want to know more about a
> mind interacting with the world without any linguistic tools. It reads like
> a kind of weird Vygotskyan experiment.
>
> Ildefonso started learning a language only when he was 27 years old.
> Although a challenge, he managed to learn it quite well. And then there is
> something intriguing:
>
> "Where he gets lost is especially with too many references to time in one
> sentence. He can't handle too many tenses in one sentence. But he can handle
> more than one reference and he can handle any amount of information. He did
> learn language. The few problems he has are nothing compared to not having
> language.
>     But the second thing is the psychological slash philosophical things
> with language. He says he thinks differently. However, there are a few
> things he doesn't think differently about. I try to meet him once a year and
> I always ask him, "When was the last time we saw each other?" I ask him a
> "when" question because it tickles me. Time was the hardest thing for him to
> learn. And he always prefers to say "the winter season" or "the Christmas
> time." He wants to point to a season or to a holiday. It's not a cognitive
> problem. To this day, he thinks it's weird that we count time the way we do.
> He can do it, but he doesn't like it. Think about it. For twenty-seven
> years, he followed the sun. He followed cows. He followed the seasons. It's
> that rain-time of the year."
>
> His problems with time remind me of the notion of a chronotope, which
> Bakthin considered underpinning the structure of the narrative. Also Ricœur
> states that narrative is always unfolding in terms of time and, vice versa,
> time is always thought narratively. Hence can't we assume that inherent to
> learning a language is the construction of a notion of time? What do you
> think?
>
> Cheers,
> Michiel
>
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