Re: 5 year old's language

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

>This is not quite on topic, but very interesting:
>
>lojbab wrote:
>
>    Russian, I speak fluently to 5 year olds, and cannot understand
>    much of what adults say unless they are talkingh to 5 year olds
>    (the difference between 5 year old language and adult language is
>    so drastic, based on my experience that i am close to arguing that
>    the whole poverty of the stimulus/language acquisition dispute is
>    a red hgerring and 5 years olds do not really uderstand the same
>    language adults do - but that is another debate)
>
>Please tell us more.
>K. Egan suggests that 5 year olds think `mythically', that is,
>with major use of metaphor (and employing powerful abstract concepts
>that children already understand).

I question whether children "understand" any abstract concepts in the sense
that adults use the word "understand".

My argument is based on a few key points:
- children acquire vocabulary steadily throughout childhood, but by age
5-6 really do not have nearly the vocabulary that adults do.
- there is a significant difference between passive understanding of a word
(which means being able to understand a sentence that uses the word even if
you cannot define the word yourself, so it is even less than "recognition"
as defined by LogFlash, for example), and the ability to actively use a
word in normal language use
- children (and adults for that matter) USE correct grammar, but do not
REQUIRE correct grammar in order to understand.  Thus correct grammar is
probably a question of efficiency in processing or "fitting in" more than
it is a question of understanding.  In Russian, this is particularly true
because it has been reported that Russian kids do not master all the case
system of Russian till as late as age 10.
- the infant brain has twice the synapses of the adult brain, even though
it of coursehas not and is not subkjected to nearly the range of sensory
or cognitive stimuli that adults receive.  They also are expending less
brain power on "everyday living".  hence it is reasonably believable that
a child of age 2 is thinking with 2-3 times the brain power about language
 inputs received than an adult hearing the same thing.  yet the child is not
 even
speaking yet 9and this is assuming that brain power is linearly based on
synapses, whereas it could easily be exponential).
-observing my kids in their first year or two here (ages 5-7) when they could
 not engage in normal conversation in English, I observed that they first
picked up a few words and set idioms that had strong meanings (OK, careful,
stop) and almost immediately after - the popular idioms of the mass culture
(I will refrain from repeating the Barney Song, but also "Go Go Power Rangers".)
I contend that they did not understand the words of these idioms, nor
necessarily the meanings of the idioms as phrases.  Rather they seemed to
identify the contexts in which the idioms could appropriately be said.  I
suspect that the first language use is just that - learning to say certain
things in certain contexts.
  After this my kids learned a lot of nouns and a few verbs, and most of
their usage consisted of permutations of these words.  But every once in
a while my kids (especially my son) would throw in a "big word" and use it
CORRECTLY.  yet upon talking to him, he did not really know what the word
meant.  In 1st grade he could tell me all about emperor penguins, in complete
grammatical sentences, but he could not understand some of the words used in
contexts unrealted to emperor penguins.  I have therefore come to think
that vocabulary acquisition at younger ages is "partial" - they know what the
words mean in a limited number of contexts, but need much more language
experience before they can handle the polysemy of adult language.  As
supporting evidence, I note that my kidstook around 3 years in this country
before they could understand my incessant punning, but havbe taken until
the last few months before they first made their own intentional puns.

Meanwhile, to elaborate briefly on my Russian background, I estimate that I
have around a 3000 word Russian vocabulary (which is also around what I have
in Lojban BTW - seems to be a plateau point for me).  MY active vocabulary is
much lower in Russian than that passive total, and perhaps a third of that
vocabulary I would not recognize in speech unless it occurred in a context that
brought the word/concept to mind (example is that the words for squirrel and
fork are similar, and I would have considerable toruble keeping them straight
in, say, LogFlash.  But my 5 year old while eating would not ask me to give
him a squirrel! %^)  I think my own experience with words like squirrel and
fork are not all that unlike those of children learning language, and indeed
I think my success in learning Russian to the level I did was because I
adopted
a childlike attitude to learning from my kids based on the limited vocabulary
I had acquired through study, and generally did not worry about my grammar
(which was atrocious - a friend calls my Russian the LeChevalier dialect of
pidgin Russian - yet I communicate well with young kids that have never been
exposed to my "dialect").

I fugure this is more than enough for a Lojban List audience unless someone
other than Bon asks questions, though you are welcome Bob to continue with me
in off-list email.

lojbab
----
lojbab                                                lojbab@access.digex.net
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA                        703-385-0273
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