Re: [xmca] Deb Roy: The birth of a word

[Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>]

I watched the video and was fascinated with the recognition of how central
to development is the "intimate dance" which creates an attunement of
velocities.

Mike commented,

I would go a lot further. The "slow down" part is not to me the main part of
the message. The process is more one of attunement of velocities, like
entrainment as you write (very like Tomasello and other suggestions to the
same effect).

But what is missing (until Roy does the analysis) are the other essential
constraints that are parts of the entrainment process; the spatial layouts,
the events (bruner referred to them as formats) that "gaga" occurs in, the
various accompanying artifacts of all kinds. All of this should be
obtainable from that flood of bits.

Mike, I agree there are other essential constraints but I want to bracket
out the attunement process to highlight the concept of emotional-volitional
processes  [the "germ-cell"] as a unit of analysis may contain the basic and
fundamental properties on which other linguistic "systems" are constructed
[as a revolutionary development in consciousness]  The intimate dance of
attunement as PRIOR to and "calling forth" the emergence of linguistic
communication from previous emotional-volitional communication.  By
bracketing out the emotional-volitional "germ cell" as a CONSTITUTIVE
catalyst emphasizes the significance to give this particular essential
constraint as central to the later development of linguistic systems in
which the word water emerges.

 How central the emotional-volitional constraint remains throughout
development as it is transformed through language acquisition is another
question but my hunch is it remains a central organizing aspect of all
cultural activity.

Larry

On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 7:33 PM, Lois Holzman <
lholzman@eastsideinstitute.org> wrote:

> I watched the Roy video a few days before it began to be discussed here and
> found it to be one of those TED talks that dazzles. I'm fascinated that not
> only a family but a funding source and research lab all put significant
> resources into it—and so, for me, what's fascinating is this is but one
> instance of what human beings get on board for and are passionate about.
> We're amazing in this regard!
> But I failed to be impressed by the substance of the talk and thought I
> would share that here. The approach to understanding language
> development/acquisition that apparently prompted the "study" seems to me to
> be very outdated, not even something Lois Bloom and I might have done 35
> years ago had the technology been invented and available.  For even then, we
> and others researching early language had moved beyond utterances in
> isolation to the unity,  semantics/syntax/pragmatics in/and the
> cultural/conversational context.
> Further, our approach (as was that of many others at the time) was looking
> at what we assumed was development or, to give us the benefit of the doubt
> (since we were not yet influenced much by Vygotsky) the unity
> learning/development.
>
> So, David, when you say "we assume that first language acquisition is
> learning rather than development" I am truly puzzled. Who is the "we"?
> Ditto the other two assumptions.
> I haven't kept up with the language acquisition literature, so maybe it's
> the case that these assumptions are out there. But what about the
> distributed language literature?
>
> Does anyone else here think that words are not born?
>
> Lois
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mar 15, 2011, at 9:46 PM, David Kellogg wrote:
>
> > Now, I want to argue that this disproves, or at least severely
> undermines, some of our heartfelt beliefs about acquiring a first language.
> >
> > a) We assume that first language acquisition is learning rather than
> development. By this we assume that it can be plotted linearly and
> quantitatively by measures such as vocabulary size and MLU. But the data
> suggests that what is going on is not the learning of a single word but
> rather the development of a system. What the child learns is not the single
> fact of the word "water", but (like Helen Keller before him) the general
> principle of language, in this case, the principle that words tend to divide
> into syllables, and that these syllables are marked by consonants and
> vowels. This allows the child to completely reorganize as syllables and
> perhaps even as consonant-vowel strings all material learned in the past,
> and anticipate the structure of all the material to be learnt in the future.
> >
> > b) We assume that the first language acquisition is nondeliberate,
> unintentional, and to a very large degree unconscious. By this we assume
> what we remember: we woke up one day and discovered that we could
> miraculously understand what people were saying to us and that the world
> made sense for the first time. But the data suggest that what is going on is
> deliberate, intentional, and if we refer to it as unconscious we mean
> "unconscious" only in the very special sense that the child, lacking
> language, does not yet have consciousness as we know it.
> >
> > c) We assume that first language acquisition is a completely DIFFERENT
> experimence from learning a second language in a classroom. By this we
> assume an invidious comparison: the first is painless and completely
> successful, while the latter is a daily torment with very doubtful
> prospects. But the data suggest that what is going on is actually quite
> similar to the data I will give below, and from the child's point of view,
> the prospects of success must seem similarly precarious.
>
>
> Don't forget to check out the latest at http://loisholzman.org
>
> Lois Holzman, Ph.D.
> Director, East Side Institute for Group and Short Term Psychotherapy
> 920 Broadway, 14th floor
> New York NY 10010
> Chair, Global Outreach for UX (www.allstars.org/ux)
> tel. 212.941.8906 ext. 324
> fax 718.797.3966
> lholzman@eastsideinstitute.org
> www.eastsideinstitute.org
> www.performingtheworld.org
> loisholzman.org
> www.allstars.org
>
> >
>
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