Re: [xmca] Ildefonso

[Carol Macdonald <carolmacdon@gmail.com>]

Earliest intentionality is about "I want..." and it is in the now. naturally
this is for the survival of the species.

And then come simple sequences: move A implies Move B (also on the I want
scale)

You realise we have to shift off the "I want" to "I enjoy" for this, and
then the series which creates enjoyment for enjoyment's sake.  The notion of
time as time will come very much later: at nursery school and KG there is
such a lot of emphasis on time--day/month/weekend/weather/seasons and
children love them so there must still be some sense of novelty. Even that
is not time as time, but surely succession.

Tenses can be hard--like talking about the past in the past--"I had been
wondering whether I hadn't been making a mistake to write this post...". I
don't think that's sensual.

And now I will stop being an out of date developmental psycholinguist and go
back to dialling 37 digits to wish my sister in Iceland "Happy Birthday".
She has had a neck operation, so I can't send my usual batch of e-cards.

Cheers
Carol

On 29 October 2010 18:49, Eijck, M.W. van <m.w.v.eijck@tue.nl> wrote:

> 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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> >
> >
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