1 00:00:00 --> 00:00:01 2 00:00:01 --> 00:00:04 The following content is provided by MIT OpenCourseWare 3 00:00:04 --> 00:00:06 under a Creative Commons license. 4 00:00:06 --> 00:00:09 Additional information about our license and MIT 5 00:00:09 --> 00:00:15 OpenCourseWare in general, is available at ocw.mit.edu. 6 00:00:15 --> 00:00:18 PROFESSOR: In the last lecture I was talking about the fact 7 00:00:18 --> 00:00:26 that kids go through roughly the stages of language 8 00:00:26 --> 00:00:27 development. 9 00:00:27 --> 00:00:31 They go through the same set of language development stages. 10 00:00:31 --> 00:00:38 11 00:00:38 --> 00:00:39 A babbling sort of free 12 00:00:39 --> 00:00:42 verbal stage, one word, two word, and then more 13 00:00:42 --> 00:00:45 than two word stages. 14 00:00:45 --> 00:00:48 The question we're left with at the moment is well, what is it 15 00:00:48 --> 00:00:52 that they're actually learning when they're learning language. 16 00:00:52 --> 00:00:55 There's lots of stuff that's got to be learned. 17 00:00:55 --> 00:00:58 One of the things that, it's on the handout somewhere there as 18 00:00:58 --> 00:01:00 I recall, is they gotta do a remarkable job of learning 19 00:01:00 --> 00:01:02 words and word meaning. 20 00:01:02 --> 00:01:07 Between about a year and a half and six years of age, in order 21 00:01:07 --> 00:01:16 to account for the vocabulary that a six year old has, you 22 00:01:16 --> 00:01:20 have to assume that children are learning five to 10 23 00:01:20 --> 00:01:23 words a day, every day. 24 00:01:23 --> 00:01:27 So, that's a rate sort of approaching a 25 00:01:27 --> 00:01:30 word an hour or so. 26 00:01:30 --> 00:01:32 They're not doing it in school, right. 27 00:01:32 --> 00:01:34 It's not that they're going to school and every day they're 28 00:01:34 --> 00:01:36 being handed long vocabulary lists. 29 00:01:36 --> 00:01:38 They're just picking this stuff up. 30 00:01:38 --> 00:01:43 It's an amazing and not trivial feat for figuring 31 00:01:43 --> 00:01:44 out how you do that. 32 00:01:44 --> 00:01:47 33 00:01:47 --> 00:01:52 Somebody says oh, look, there's the chalk, and the kid not only 34 00:01:52 --> 00:01:57 has to learn this new word, chalk, but has to figure out 35 00:01:57 --> 00:02:04 that it somehow refers to this box of stuff, and not to the 36 00:02:04 --> 00:02:12 color yellow or to the letter c or to the small boxes when Bush 37 00:02:12 --> 00:02:16 is president, or any of a vast number of other possibilities. 38 00:02:16 --> 00:02:19 It's a very daunting problem. 39 00:02:19 --> 00:02:22 I'm going to focus rother than on the word meaning problem, on 40 00:02:22 --> 00:02:25 a different problem, which is the problem of 41 00:02:25 --> 00:02:28 learning grammar. 42 00:02:28 --> 00:02:31 43 00:02:31 --> 00:02:35 There, there are sort of two large scale classes of theory 44 00:02:35 --> 00:02:39 that I have cartooned -- I cartooned them on the board and 45 00:02:39 --> 00:02:45 described them on the handout as the East coast view 46 00:02:45 --> 00:02:46 and the West coast view. 47 00:02:46 --> 00:02:50 48 00:02:50 --> 00:02:51 The East coast view could really be called the 49 00:02:51 --> 00:02:53 MIT view originally. 50 00:02:53 --> 00:02:58 It really starts with people like Chomsky here and is nicely 51 00:02:58 --> 00:03:01 wrapped up in Steve Pinker's book called The Language 52 00:03:01 --> 00:03:03 Instinct, which if you turn out to be interested in the topic 53 00:03:03 --> 00:03:06 of language and language learning, I'd strongly 54 00:03:06 --> 00:03:07 recommend you read it. 55 00:03:07 --> 00:03:10 Among other things, Pinker is one of the better writers in 56 00:03:10 --> 00:03:13 our field and it's a good read. 57 00:03:13 --> 00:03:16 58 00:03:16 --> 00:03:20 The West coast view was a view you held by people like 59 00:03:20 --> 00:03:22 Mark Seidenberg at UCLA. 60 00:03:22 --> 00:03:26 Well, Mark Seidenberg's now at Minnesota, so this geographical 61 00:03:26 --> 00:03:29 thing doesn't work so well anymore. 62 00:03:29 --> 00:03:30 Here the distinction. 63 00:03:30 --> 00:03:35 64 00:03:35 --> 00:03:36 Let's start with the specific problem. 65 00:03:36 --> 00:03:41 Specific problem might be something like, as it says on 66 00:03:41 --> 00:03:49 the handout, how do you make the past tense in English? 67 00:03:49 --> 00:03:51 You'd obviously have to learn to make the past tense in some 68 00:03:51 --> 00:03:54 other language if you were going to learn yourself 69 00:03:54 --> 00:03:56 some other language. 70 00:03:56 --> 00:03:59 But I walked to the store. 71 00:03:59 --> 00:04:01 Yesterday I did what? 72 00:04:01 --> 00:04:03 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. 73 00:04:03 --> 00:04:07 PROFESSOR: I walked to the store. 74 00:04:07 --> 00:04:14 Today I plan to go to the airport, actually, right 75 00:04:14 --> 00:04:16 after this lecture. 76 00:04:16 --> 00:04:17 Yesterday I did what? 77 00:04:17 --> 00:04:18 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. 78 00:04:18 --> 00:04:20 PROFESSOR: All right. 79 00:04:20 --> 00:04:24 So, how do we go and make the past tense in English? 80 00:04:24 --> 00:04:28 AUDIENCE: e-d. 81 00:04:28 --> 00:04:31 PROFESSOR: Yeah, stick an e-d on things most of the time, 82 00:04:31 --> 00:04:37 except today I'm going to sing yesterday I--. 83 00:04:37 --> 00:04:37 [UNINTELLIGIBLE] 84 00:04:37 --> 00:04:40 I didn't singed. 85 00:04:40 --> 00:04:42 Today we ring the bell, yesterday-- 86 00:04:42 --> 00:04:43 AUDIENCE: Rang. 87 00:04:43 --> 00:04:45 PROFESSOR: We rang the bell, or we rung the but -- no we didn't 88 00:04:45 --> 00:04:47 rung the bell yesterday. 89 00:04:47 --> 00:04:50 The bell was rung yesterday, but we rang it--. 90 00:04:50 --> 00:04:53 Anyway, it gets complicated. 91 00:04:53 --> 00:04:59 Today I bring you all this information about language, 92 00:04:59 --> 00:05:00 and yesterday I--. 93 00:05:00 --> 00:05:01 AUDIENCE: Brought. 94 00:05:01 --> 00:05:04 PROFESSOR: Brought -- it's not even brang. 95 00:05:04 --> 00:05:07 So the rule -- there's sort of a sub sing-sang kind of 96 00:05:07 --> 00:05:10 rule, there's a bring-brang. 97 00:05:10 --> 00:05:11 No, brang doesn't work. 98 00:05:11 --> 00:05:13 Brought. 99 00:05:13 --> 00:05:19 So, kids behave as thought they have learned a rule 100 00:05:19 --> 00:05:22 and a set of exceptions. 101 00:05:22 --> 00:05:26 The East coast view of this is that they really 102 00:05:26 --> 00:05:28 have learned a rule. 103 00:05:28 --> 00:05:34 That somewhere deep in their little brain, you could 104 00:05:34 --> 00:05:39 hypothetically go in and find the rule, that it is 105 00:05:39 --> 00:05:42 written in there. 106 00:05:42 --> 00:05:47 One of the lines of evidence for this is that at a certain 107 00:05:47 --> 00:05:50 point during development as they're learning this, they 108 00:05:50 --> 00:05:53 start to overuse the rule. 109 00:05:53 --> 00:06:04 A child will say things like I goed to the store yesterday, or 110 00:06:04 --> 00:06:09 I bringed the ball home from school yesterday, or 111 00:06:09 --> 00:06:10 something like that. 112 00:06:10 --> 00:06:11 They'll start to overgeneralize. 113 00:06:11 --> 00:06:13 They don't do it all the time. 114 00:06:13 --> 00:06:17 But they start to behave as though they are saying ah-ha, 115 00:06:17 --> 00:06:19 got this verb here, I know I need to make it into 116 00:06:19 --> 00:06:20 the past tense. 117 00:06:20 --> 00:06:23 What's the rule for making the past tense? 118 00:06:23 --> 00:06:26 I gotta stick an e-d on the end of it. 119 00:06:26 --> 00:06:28 Even though a few months earlier they might have 120 00:06:28 --> 00:06:31 successfully said went. 121 00:06:31 --> 00:06:34 It is as if they learn a rule, and they learn 122 00:06:34 --> 00:06:38 a set of exceptions. 123 00:06:38 --> 00:06:40 When you go in and look for what you're trying to 124 00:06:40 --> 00:06:43 say, past tense of go. 125 00:06:43 --> 00:06:47 If the past tense of go, you know, I went, doesn't get 126 00:06:47 --> 00:06:50 there fast enough, you default to the rule. 127 00:06:50 --> 00:06:54 You say I goed. 128 00:06:54 --> 00:07:02 This assumes a certain amount of stuff in the head ahead of 129 00:07:02 --> 00:07:03 time, that's what this cartoon is about. 130 00:07:03 --> 00:07:09 It doesn't need to be exactly this kind of stuff, but this 131 00:07:09 --> 00:07:14 is the sort of stuff that you might have in the head. 132 00:07:14 --> 00:07:16 Let's think, actually, going back to the lectures I 133 00:07:16 --> 00:07:20 was giving on cognitive development last week. 134 00:07:20 --> 00:07:23 Remember, there's pretty good evidence that little kids 135 00:07:23 --> 00:07:26 have in their head an idea about objects. 136 00:07:26 --> 00:07:28 They know there are such things about objects. 137 00:07:28 --> 00:07:31 So -- oops, I didn't put objects in here. 138 00:07:31 --> 00:07:36 Let's assume that there are such things as objects. 139 00:07:36 --> 00:07:41 Also, we saw that little kids know something about number, 140 00:07:41 --> 00:07:43 like they can do that Karen Wynn style baby math. 141 00:07:43 --> 00:07:48 They know that there's 1 and more than 1, certainly. 142 00:07:48 --> 00:07:51 Now let's assume that they've got some innate idea, 143 00:07:51 --> 00:07:54 some innate capability to learn language. 144 00:07:54 --> 00:07:56 Well, if I'm going to learn a language of any use, it's going 145 00:07:56 --> 00:07:59 to have to be able to talk about these object things. 146 00:07:59 --> 00:08:03 So I'm going to have some sort of innate idea that 147 00:08:03 --> 00:08:04 there will be nouns. 148 00:08:04 --> 00:08:07 I don't know what the nouns are going to look like in this 149 00:08:07 --> 00:08:12 language, but I come into the world in this view knowing 150 00:08:12 --> 00:08:15 that there have to be noun-like things. 151 00:08:15 --> 00:08:20 Not only that, I know that there can be one thing and 152 00:08:20 --> 00:08:22 there can be more than one thing. 153 00:08:22 --> 00:08:25 It therefore follows that I need to be able to 154 00:08:25 --> 00:08:26 talk about that, too. 155 00:08:26 --> 00:08:32 And so my job as a little language learner is to figure 156 00:08:32 --> 00:08:37 out what do the nouns look like, and how do I make those 157 00:08:37 --> 00:08:43 into plural in my language. 158 00:08:43 --> 00:08:45 I said there's an infinite number of ways in 159 00:08:45 --> 00:08:47 principle that I could designate a plural. 160 00:08:47 --> 00:08:52 But I will learn that, for the most part, in English it's 161 00:08:52 --> 00:08:56 going to be add s, right? 162 00:08:56 --> 00:08:58 Oh, look, there's the cat. 163 00:08:58 --> 00:09:01 Oh, look, there are the cats and so on. 164 00:09:01 --> 00:09:03 I'm going to have to do the same thing as I was talking 165 00:09:03 --> 00:09:04 about in the past tense. 166 00:09:04 --> 00:09:07 I'm going to have to learn there are exceptions. 167 00:09:07 --> 00:09:11 Yeah, cat, cats, rat, rats, chair, chairs, 168 00:09:11 --> 00:09:14 mouse -- uh, mice. 169 00:09:14 --> 00:09:17 Fish -- for some reason fish is fish. 170 00:09:17 --> 00:09:20 One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish -- all 171 00:09:20 --> 00:09:22 that kind of stuff. 172 00:09:22 --> 00:09:26 So again, I'll learn a rule, I'll overgeneralize that rule 173 00:09:26 --> 00:09:30 when I get to be three or four years old, and I'll learn 174 00:09:30 --> 00:09:33 a set of exceptions. 175 00:09:33 --> 00:09:38 I will find when I become a literature professor later on 176 00:09:38 --> 00:09:43 and study the history of English literature, that things 177 00:09:43 --> 00:09:46 shift over time -- things that were exceptions or things that 178 00:09:46 --> 00:09:49 were ungrammatical once upon a time might become grammatical. 179 00:09:49 --> 00:09:52 It's a moving target language. 180 00:09:52 --> 00:09:55 You have to figure out what the current state of 181 00:09:55 --> 00:09:59 your language might be. 182 00:09:59 --> 00:10:04 The alternative is the West coast view, which is really 183 00:10:04 --> 00:10:07 sort of a neural net parallel distributed processing kind of 184 00:10:07 --> 00:10:10 view is to say that we don't have to propose that there's 185 00:10:10 --> 00:10:14 all this stuff, these structures in the head 186 00:10:14 --> 00:10:15 in quite the same way. 187 00:10:15 --> 00:10:18 What we can say is look, there's this very powerful 188 00:10:18 --> 00:10:23 association learner in here, a device out there looking 189 00:10:23 --> 00:10:25 for statistical regularity. 190 00:10:25 --> 00:10:29 There's evidence -- I think I mentioned last time that little 191 00:10:29 --> 00:10:34 kids long before they can speak a language are already 192 00:10:34 --> 00:10:37 sensitive to the statistical regularities of what syllables 193 00:10:37 --> 00:10:43 can follow what other syllables in the noises that 194 00:10:43 --> 00:10:44 they are hearing. 195 00:10:44 --> 00:10:49 So you've got this very powerful statistical learning 196 00:10:49 --> 00:10:50 devise in your head. 197 00:10:50 --> 00:10:55 It ends up behaving as if it had a rule, but the 198 00:10:55 --> 00:11:01 rule is not written out anywhere in brainware. 199 00:11:01 --> 00:11:04 It's just the way the network behaves. 200 00:11:04 --> 00:11:10 In the same way that this hunk of chalk -- where's somebody 201 00:11:10 --> 00:11:12 who looks reasonably alert. 202 00:11:12 --> 00:11:14 Do you look reasonably alert? 203 00:11:14 --> 00:11:15 No, now she's looking elsewhere. 204 00:11:15 --> 00:11:18 205 00:11:18 --> 00:11:20 All right, how about if I just throw it out. 206 00:11:20 --> 00:11:22 There we go, look at that. 207 00:11:22 --> 00:11:23 Very good. 208 00:11:23 --> 00:11:24 Send it back. 209 00:11:24 --> 00:11:25 That's a smart hunk of chalk. 210 00:11:25 --> 00:11:30 It knew to fly on a parabolic path, right, knew a whole 211 00:11:30 --> 00:11:32 bunch of 801 style physics. 212 00:11:32 --> 00:11:34 It didn't know it in any real sense, of course. 213 00:11:34 --> 00:11:40 It behaved as if, because it's operating under simple physical 214 00:11:40 --> 00:11:43 forces in the world and ends up behaving as if it 215 00:11:43 --> 00:11:44 knows physics. 216 00:11:44 --> 00:11:48 It's a somewhat stretched analogy, but the same sort 217 00:11:48 --> 00:11:50 of thing is going on here. 218 00:11:50 --> 00:11:54 You learn about the linguistic world you are in and then you 219 00:11:54 --> 00:12:00 behave as if you knew these rules, rather than having some 220 00:12:00 --> 00:12:06 sort of mechanism by which you actually, in a sense, at birth 221 00:12:06 --> 00:12:09 knew that there should be such rules and merely needed to 222 00:12:09 --> 00:12:13 figure out the particular form that the rule took 223 00:12:13 --> 00:12:15 in your language. 224 00:12:15 --> 00:12:25 These are, in a sense, modern and not hugely different views 225 00:12:25 --> 00:12:28 of initial positions that are radically different. 226 00:12:28 --> 00:12:34 So, if this is a continuum here, way over here somewhere 227 00:12:34 --> 00:12:40 would be radical nativist views of language. 228 00:12:40 --> 00:12:44 Way over here somewhere would be radical imperacist 229 00:12:44 --> 00:12:47 views of language. 230 00:12:47 --> 00:12:53 231 00:12:53 --> 00:12:57 The most radical nativist views nobody particularly held, 232 00:12:57 --> 00:13:01 except I think I mentioned that little children are subject to 233 00:13:01 --> 00:13:03 this as an erroneous thought. 234 00:13:03 --> 00:13:10 That's the view that you are not only born to have language, 235 00:13:10 --> 00:13:13 but you're born to have a specific language. 236 00:13:13 --> 00:13:20 So that if you are a Saudi kid, that you are born to speak 237 00:13:20 --> 00:13:24 Arabic and that's all else being equa -- well, even 238 00:13:24 --> 00:13:25 all else not being equal. 239 00:13:25 --> 00:13:26 You're a Saudi kid. 240 00:13:26 --> 00:13:30 You get transplanted to Sweden, and at the right 241 00:13:30 --> 00:13:33 moment Arabic appears. 242 00:13:33 --> 00:13:33 That's not true. 243 00:13:33 --> 00:13:37 Nobody other than a small kid I think ever particularly 244 00:13:37 --> 00:13:39 believed this, because it was clearly falsifiable. 245 00:13:39 --> 00:13:43 246 00:13:43 --> 00:13:46 The earliest experiment I know in this area, and I don't know 247 00:13:46 --> 00:13:49 if the experiment was ever done, is something reported 248 00:13:49 --> 00:13:56 by Herodotus in his book about traveling in Egypt. 249 00:13:56 --> 00:14:00 He says that King Psammetichos of Egypt 2,500 years ago 250 00:14:00 --> 00:14:10 believed that there was an original language of humankind 251 00:14:10 --> 00:14:16 where King Psammetichos had grown up in the Judeo Christian 252 00:14:16 --> 00:14:18 tradition, he might have called it the language 253 00:14:18 --> 00:14:19 of the Garden of Eden. 254 00:14:19 --> 00:14:21 What language did Adam and Eve speak in the garden? 255 00:14:21 --> 00:14:26 Well, the original language of humankind. 256 00:14:26 --> 00:14:31 Psammetichos figured he would go and figure out what 257 00:14:31 --> 00:14:32 that language was. 258 00:14:32 --> 00:14:34 He actually had a hypothesis about what it was. 259 00:14:34 --> 00:14:35 He was King of Egypt. 260 00:14:35 --> 00:14:39 It stood to reason that the original language of 261 00:14:39 --> 00:14:41 humanity was Egyptian. 262 00:14:41 --> 00:14:44 So what he is alleged to have done is to take two children, 263 00:14:44 --> 00:14:48 give them to a shepherd, tell the shepherd to raise them with 264 00:14:48 --> 00:14:53 sheep and not talk to them, and to report to the King what 265 00:14:53 --> 00:14:56 the first word was that these children spoke. 266 00:14:56 --> 00:14:59 267 00:14:59 --> 00:15:02 The report is that when the children first spoke, their 268 00:15:02 --> 00:15:07 first word was "beccau," which sounds suspiciously like they 269 00:15:07 --> 00:15:09 were imitating the sheep I think. 270 00:15:09 --> 00:15:14 But anyway, beccau turned out to mean bread, and that seemed 271 00:15:14 --> 00:15:18 like a pretty encouraging thing, except that it meant 272 00:15:18 --> 00:15:23 bread in Phrygian, the language of Phrygia, which is 273 00:15:23 --> 00:15:25 in modern day Turkey. 274 00:15:25 --> 00:15:29 It wasn't word for bread in Egyptian at all. 275 00:15:29 --> 00:15:32 So, Psammetichos is reputed to have been disappointed by the 276 00:15:32 --> 00:15:33 results of the experiment. 277 00:15:33 --> 00:15:36 Look, we don't know that the experiment was ever done. 278 00:15:36 --> 00:15:40 We do know or we're pretty sure we know how the experiment 279 00:15:40 --> 00:15:45 would have come out had it actually been done. 280 00:15:45 --> 00:15:51 Which is that they wouldn't have spoken a language at all. 281 00:15:51 --> 00:15:56 That in the absence of a linguistic environment, even if 282 00:15:56 --> 00:15:59 you come into the world with some native endowment to learn 283 00:15:59 --> 00:16:03 a language, which does seem to be the case, you do not speak a 284 00:16:03 --> 00:16:08 normal human language unless you are raised in a linguistic 285 00:16:08 --> 00:16:11 environment at some point. 286 00:16:11 --> 00:16:17 We think we know this from an isolated set of cases over the 287 00:16:17 --> 00:16:23 course of historical record where kids are somehow 288 00:16:23 --> 00:16:25 deprived of linguistic input. 289 00:16:25 --> 00:16:31 Now that happens typically in odd and disturbing kinds of 290 00:16:31 --> 00:16:36 circumstances, and so it's nothing like a real experiment 291 00:16:36 --> 00:16:38 because of course, you'd never do the real experiment, 292 00:16:38 --> 00:16:39 it wouldn't be even close to ethical. 293 00:16:39 --> 00:16:43 294 00:16:43 --> 00:16:46 This class of children are known as wolf children, 295 00:16:46 --> 00:16:51 a term that has always disturbed me personally. 296 00:16:51 --> 00:16:57 But the illusion is not to wolfe with an e, but to the 297 00:16:57 --> 00:17:02 legendary story of the founding of Rome where the twins Romulus 298 00:17:02 --> 00:17:06 and Remus are abandoned -- I can't remember why -- but 299 00:17:06 --> 00:17:09 anyway they get suckled by a she-wolf. 300 00:17:09 --> 00:17:12 So if you look at Roman coins and things you'll see this 301 00:17:12 --> 00:17:16 picture of a great big wolf and two little babies 302 00:17:16 --> 00:17:19 suckling underneath. 303 00:17:19 --> 00:17:23 Presumably, the wolf wasn't speaking good Latin, but 304 00:17:23 --> 00:17:26 presumably Romulus and Remus managed to come up with good 305 00:17:26 --> 00:17:29 Latin somehow out of all this. 306 00:17:29 --> 00:17:33 307 00:17:33 --> 00:17:37 Occasionally it happens that some kid gets abandons in the 308 00:17:37 --> 00:17:39 woods and somehow survives. 309 00:17:39 --> 00:17:42 I think there's the case of an Indian child who's described 310 00:17:42 --> 00:17:43 in [? Gleitman ?]. 311 00:17:43 --> 00:17:47 There was a very interesting but disturbing book called 312 00:17:47 --> 00:17:51 Genie, written a few years ago, about a child of deeply 313 00:17:51 --> 00:17:54 disturbed parents who had taken her basically locked her in a 314 00:17:54 --> 00:17:58 closet for all of her childhood. 315 00:17:58 --> 00:18:01 The bottom line is that this is not going to be good for any 316 00:18:01 --> 00:18:04 aspect of your development, but you don't develop a 317 00:18:04 --> 00:18:04 normal language. 318 00:18:04 --> 00:18:08 If you don't get exposed to language during a so-called 319 00:18:08 --> 00:18:12 critical period, which for language is certainly over by 320 00:18:12 --> 00:18:17 early adolescence and is getting pretty much over, six, 321 00:18:17 --> 00:18:19 seven, eight years old you'd better get your language 322 00:18:19 --> 00:18:24 experience in there before that. 323 00:18:24 --> 00:18:26 You're just never going to speak a normal 324 00:18:26 --> 00:18:27 grammatic language. 325 00:18:27 --> 00:18:29 The door closes on it. 326 00:18:29 --> 00:18:34 So, Genie, this poor girl who was raised in a closet, could 327 00:18:34 --> 00:18:38 be taught a certain amount of vocabulary and things like 328 00:18:38 --> 00:18:43 that, but could never somehow get a real grip on the 329 00:18:43 --> 00:18:46 grammar of a language. 330 00:18:46 --> 00:18:48 It also turns out to be easier to learn a second language 331 00:18:48 --> 00:18:52 during the critical period, but not impossible to learn one 332 00:18:52 --> 00:18:55 afterwards, as those of you have just started learning 333 00:18:55 --> 00:18:58 French or something will be happy to know. 334 00:18:58 --> 00:19:04 The claim is that it's very difficult to become a truly 335 00:19:04 --> 00:19:14 fluent speaker of a second language later in life. 336 00:19:14 --> 00:19:17 But it's not impossible in the way it appears to be impossible 337 00:19:17 --> 00:19:25 to learn a first language after the end of the critical period. 338 00:19:25 --> 00:19:34 The alternative, the radical alternative, to King 339 00:19:34 --> 00:19:36 Psammetichos on one side, if we're sticking with 340 00:19:36 --> 00:19:38 classical references. 341 00:19:38 --> 00:19:41 On this side would be somebody like Saint Augustine who writes 342 00:19:41 --> 00:19:43 that he knows how he learned language. 343 00:19:43 --> 00:19:49 He learned language by being explicitly taught. 344 00:19:49 --> 00:19:51 The same way you'd learn anything else. 345 00:19:51 --> 00:20:00 That people said that's chalk, that's a chair, that's your TA 346 00:20:00 --> 00:20:03 and you learned this sort of stuff. 347 00:20:03 --> 00:20:06 That it was an act of learning not unlike 348 00:20:06 --> 00:20:08 other acts of learning. 349 00:20:08 --> 00:20:12 This gets developed -- Saint Augustine was not particularly 350 00:20:12 --> 00:20:15 working on learning theory. 351 00:20:15 --> 00:20:23 But by the time you get to the mid-20th century and the heyday 352 00:20:23 --> 00:20:27 of behaviorism and all that good Skinnarian pigeons in the 353 00:20:27 --> 00:20:33 box kind of thing, you get a series of language learning 354 00:20:33 --> 00:20:37 that say well, look, language learning is just a fancy 355 00:20:37 --> 00:20:40 variety of any other kind of learning. 356 00:20:40 --> 00:20:45 You want your kid to speak English and so you reward 357 00:20:45 --> 00:20:46 him for speaking English. 358 00:20:46 --> 00:20:50 You shape the behavior. 359 00:20:50 --> 00:20:52 The same time you're trying to get the kid to do some sort of 360 00:20:52 --> 00:20:56 complicated thing like being toilet trained, you're also 361 00:20:56 --> 00:21:02 trying to get him to do things like saying I go to the store. 362 00:21:02 --> 00:21:04 Yesterday I went to the store. 363 00:21:04 --> 00:21:07 364 00:21:07 --> 00:21:10 It's just the same thing more or less. 365 00:21:10 --> 00:21:12 366 00:21:12 --> 00:21:15 One of the great efforts to make that into a single 367 00:21:15 --> 00:21:17 coherent story is B.F. 368 00:21:17 --> 00:21:23 Skinner's book called Verbal Behavior -- good name 369 00:21:23 --> 00:21:25 from a good behaviorist. 370 00:21:25 --> 00:21:28 It's just another kind of behavior. 371 00:21:28 --> 00:21:34 The start of the East coast story and the start of modern 372 00:21:34 --> 00:21:38 cognitive science in some ways is Noam Chomsky, then a young 373 00:21:38 --> 00:21:43 professor at MIT, writing a scathing review of that book, 374 00:21:43 --> 00:21:45 which still bears reading. 375 00:21:45 --> 00:21:48 It's still fun to read that, or you can go read the summary of 376 00:21:48 --> 00:21:52 it or the recap of it in Pinker's book. 377 00:21:52 --> 00:21:55 But you have to imagine this as sort of a cultural event. 378 00:21:55 --> 00:21:59 Skinner is the leading American psychologist of the time, and 379 00:21:59 --> 00:22:07 this young Noam Chomsky guy is going after him with a bat and 380 00:22:07 --> 00:22:09 both barrels blazing and any other weaponry you 381 00:22:09 --> 00:22:10 can think of. 382 00:22:10 --> 00:22:13 It is not a temperate review. 383 00:22:13 --> 00:22:17 It is insulting in many ways. 384 00:22:17 --> 00:22:21 It's an insulting piece written by a young guy about a very 385 00:22:21 --> 00:22:25 senior, established, important guy, and it starts 386 00:22:25 --> 00:22:26 a revolution. 387 00:22:26 --> 00:22:28 Anyway, I'm not going to go through the whole argument. 388 00:22:28 --> 00:22:37 But the sort of thing that Chomsky points out is that -- 389 00:22:37 --> 00:22:39 you know, Skinner's talking about schedules of 390 00:22:39 --> 00:22:41 reinforcement. 391 00:22:41 --> 00:22:45 The patterns of reinforcement for language just aren't there. 392 00:22:45 --> 00:22:48 This has been extensively developed since Chomsky's time. 393 00:22:48 --> 00:22:53 But you can imagine this as just an example. 394 00:22:53 --> 00:22:59 Imagine yourself back home as the little kid and you go up to 395 00:22:59 --> 00:23:04 your mother and you say, "Mommy, I loved you so much." 396 00:23:04 --> 00:23:09 What's the chance that she's going to say, "Bad child, bad 397 00:23:09 --> 00:23:16 child, it's I love you." By the same token, what's the chance 398 00:23:16 --> 00:23:23 that if you go up and say, as a precocious three year old, 399 00:23:23 --> 00:23:28 "Mother dear, I'm sorry to have to say this but it turns out 400 00:23:28 --> 00:23:32 that I actually loathe you and despise the ground on which you 401 00:23:32 --> 00:23:37 walk." Your mother is not going to say "That's a very 402 00:23:37 --> 00:23:39 sophisticated utterance for a three year old. 403 00:23:39 --> 00:23:44 Good job." You're not going to get -- look, that's 404 00:23:44 --> 00:23:45 a cartoon version. 405 00:23:45 --> 00:23:48 But when you go and look at substantial bodies of child 406 00:23:48 --> 00:23:51 language and their interaction with the grown-ups in their 407 00:23:51 --> 00:23:55 life, you don't find good evidence for a systematic 408 00:23:55 --> 00:24:00 correction of language or a systematic reinforcement 409 00:24:00 --> 00:24:01 for grammatical structure. 410 00:24:01 --> 00:24:06 You don't find any great sensitivity on the part of 411 00:24:06 --> 00:24:08 the kid to that direction when it's given. 412 00:24:08 --> 00:24:14 The sorts of things that every parent -- they show up in the 413 00:24:14 --> 00:24:20 child language literature -- but any parent can tell you 414 00:24:20 --> 00:24:28 that the kid comes up you and says, "Mommy, I loved you," and 415 00:24:28 --> 00:24:30 you say, "Oh, that's sweet, honey but it's really Mommy I 416 00:24:30 --> 00:24:34 love you." The kids says, "Yeah, that's right, Mommy, I 417 00:24:34 --> 00:24:39 loved you." They don't show an awful lot of sensitivity to 418 00:24:39 --> 00:24:45 this sort of negative support for what they're saying. 419 00:24:45 --> 00:24:47 How they actually figure out eventually that it's wrong is 420 00:24:47 --> 00:24:49 an interesting and important problem. 421 00:24:49 --> 00:24:54 But what is pretty clearly the case is that a story that will 422 00:24:54 --> 00:24:59 explain how it is that I persuaded my pigeon in my intro 423 00:24:59 --> 00:25:02 psych class to do ballet -- I think I told that story here. 424 00:25:02 --> 00:25:04 But anyway, I shaped my pigeon to do ballet. 425 00:25:04 --> 00:25:06 That was great. 426 00:25:06 --> 00:25:13 That such a story does not cash out well as a story 427 00:25:13 --> 00:25:15 for how you're trying to explain language. 428 00:25:15 --> 00:25:20 It does not seem to be possible to explain 429 00:25:20 --> 00:25:25 language in those terms. 430 00:25:25 --> 00:25:28 As noted, if you want to know more about this particular 431 00:25:28 --> 00:25:36 argument, I really would recommend Pinker's book. 432 00:25:36 --> 00:25:38 It's good stuff. 433 00:25:38 --> 00:25:39 So, what do we got? 434 00:25:39 --> 00:25:43 We got the notion that specific languages are learned. 435 00:25:43 --> 00:25:46 You didn't come into the world pre-wired for English, 436 00:25:46 --> 00:25:48 Arabic, Chinese or whatever. 437 00:25:48 --> 00:25:52 Language in the abstract, it's not exactly clear what it is 438 00:25:52 --> 00:25:56 that's innate, but something is innate that allows you 439 00:25:56 --> 00:26:00 to learn language. 440 00:26:00 --> 00:26:05 That something could be as specific as having, in a sense, 441 00:26:05 --> 00:26:09 the grammar written out in some sort of abstract form in your 442 00:26:09 --> 00:26:11 head and you're filling in the blanks. 443 00:26:11 --> 00:26:16 It could be something as non-specific as having a device 444 00:26:16 --> 00:26:19 that's designed to look for regularities in 445 00:26:19 --> 00:26:21 linguistic input. 446 00:26:21 --> 00:26:32 But something is in there that pre-disposes you and any 447 00:26:32 --> 00:26:40 linguistically normal human to learn language. 448 00:26:40 --> 00:26:44 In fact, it's not just something that's pre-disposing 449 00:26:44 --> 00:26:47 you to learn a spoken language. 450 00:26:47 --> 00:26:53 One of the most interesting bits of work in recent years in 451 00:26:53 --> 00:26:58 this area is the development of what really boils down to a 452 00:26:58 --> 00:27:05 brand new language growing up, as much as anything, out of 453 00:27:05 --> 00:27:07 whatever this innate endowment is. 454 00:27:07 --> 00:27:12 This is the story of Nicaraguan sign language before the 455 00:27:12 --> 00:27:16 Sandinista Revolution in the '70s in Nicaragua. 456 00:27:16 --> 00:27:23 I gather that deaf kids were typically raised at home and 457 00:27:23 --> 00:27:29 treated as though they were not just deaf, but not bright. 458 00:27:29 --> 00:27:31 They weren't going to learn much. 459 00:27:31 --> 00:27:33 460 00:27:33 --> 00:27:34 I don't know if this 461 00:27:34 --> 00:27:36 is universally true, but there was a population of such kids. 462 00:27:36 --> 00:27:40 When the Revolution happened, one of the things that happened 463 00:27:40 --> 00:27:42 was a school for the deaf was set up in Managua, in the 464 00:27:42 --> 00:27:46 capital, and a bunch of deaf kids were brought together 465 00:27:46 --> 00:27:49 for the first time. 466 00:27:49 --> 00:27:55 What happened was that -- deaf kids, even in the absence of 467 00:27:55 --> 00:28:00 other members of the deaf community, will produce signs, 468 00:28:00 --> 00:28:07 gestures called home signs that indicate certain things. 469 00:28:07 --> 00:28:10 It's sort of a basic vocabulary, not a language, but 470 00:28:10 --> 00:28:13 sort of a core vocabulary that you can use to communicate with 471 00:28:13 --> 00:28:17 your hearing parents, for instance. 472 00:28:17 --> 00:28:22 What happened was that all these deaf kids got together 473 00:28:22 --> 00:28:27 and I don't know what was going on in school, but I think what 474 00:28:27 --> 00:28:31 was going on at night up in the dormitory was they were working 475 00:28:31 --> 00:28:35 something out so they could communicate with each other. 476 00:28:35 --> 00:28:41 They put together sort of a proto language. 477 00:28:41 --> 00:28:45 Then the next generation, the next cohort of kids come, 478 00:28:45 --> 00:28:49 and now there's a crude linguistic environment. 479 00:28:49 --> 00:28:53 What has happened over the next few cohorts of kids is that the 480 00:28:53 --> 00:28:57 next round of language learning kids have systematically 481 00:28:57 --> 00:29:02 developed a language that now has grammatical structures in 482 00:29:02 --> 00:29:04 it that look like the grammatical structures 483 00:29:04 --> 00:29:06 of other languages. 484 00:29:06 --> 00:29:09 American Sign Language, which is the common language used in 485 00:29:09 --> 00:29:12 the deaf community, the signing deaf community here, is a 486 00:29:12 --> 00:29:16 language like French, English, Chinese or whatever. 487 00:29:16 --> 00:29:20 It's not English translated into hand gesture. 488 00:29:20 --> 00:29:23 Nicaraguan Sign Language is not American Sign Language, it's a 489 00:29:23 --> 00:29:28 new sign language with its own set of vocabulary and its 490 00:29:28 --> 00:29:30 own grammatical structure. 491 00:29:30 --> 00:29:37 But that grammatical structure seems to reflect an underlying 492 00:29:37 --> 00:29:41 tendency for all languages to have certain 493 00:29:41 --> 00:29:42 structures to them. 494 00:29:42 --> 00:29:45 Let me give you one example because it's brand new -- this 495 00:29:45 --> 00:29:47 year's discovery in this realm. 496 00:29:47 --> 00:29:52 Suppose you're telling the Jack and Jill story, right. 497 00:29:52 --> 00:29:55 Jack and Jill went up the hill and then stuff happens and they 498 00:29:55 --> 00:29:58 fall down the hill, right. 499 00:29:58 --> 00:30:04 In English, the fall down part and the hill part are separate. 500 00:30:04 --> 00:30:06 They are obligatorily separate. 501 00:30:06 --> 00:30:08 There's the verb part and there's the 502 00:30:08 --> 00:30:10 object of that verb. 503 00:30:10 --> 00:30:12 You fall down and you fell down the hill. 504 00:30:12 --> 00:30:15 There's no reason that would need to be the case in 505 00:30:15 --> 00:30:17 a sign language, right. 506 00:30:17 --> 00:30:20 You could perfectly have a gesture that was blah that 507 00:30:20 --> 00:30:23 designates the act of falling down a hill. 508 00:30:23 --> 00:30:29 And indeed, apparently, the first generations of signers 509 00:30:29 --> 00:30:33 in this Nicaraguan school, have signs like that. 510 00:30:33 --> 00:30:36 But the new kids, the kids who came in young and are learning, 511 00:30:36 --> 00:30:41 developing this new grammatical version of sign language, have 512 00:30:41 --> 00:30:44 now separated those sings out and have a falling 513 00:30:44 --> 00:30:46 sign and a hill sign. 514 00:30:46 --> 00:30:48 I don't know that the signs look like that at all. 515 00:30:48 --> 00:30:51 The important piece of it though -- that's another 516 00:30:51 --> 00:30:54 misconception about signs is that the signs necessarily need 517 00:30:54 --> 00:30:56 to be sort of pictographic. 518 00:30:56 --> 00:30:59 There's no requirement that the hill sign look like a hill. 519 00:30:59 --> 00:31:02 But those of us who are complete illiterates in 520 00:31:02 --> 00:31:04 anything like a sign language it might as well be because 521 00:31:04 --> 00:31:05 it gives you the idea. 522 00:31:05 --> 00:31:10 So, they have developed instead of falling down the hill sign, 523 00:31:10 --> 00:31:16 a thing falling hill grammar that corresponds to the same 524 00:31:16 --> 00:31:20 sort of constraints that show up in other languages. 525 00:31:20 --> 00:31:22 526 00:31:22 --> 00:31:27 This whole project has been interesting evidence for the 527 00:31:27 --> 00:31:34 powerful in which the human brain is there to learn, and 528 00:31:34 --> 00:31:38 even if necessary to create language. 529 00:31:38 --> 00:31:43 Well, that raises the interesting question of well, 530 00:31:43 --> 00:31:46 what about non-human brains. 531 00:31:46 --> 00:31:50 Do animals have language? 532 00:31:50 --> 00:31:55 This has been a question for a long, long time. 533 00:31:55 --> 00:32:03 It's been a scientific question for a reasonably long time. 534 00:32:03 --> 00:32:05 We're going to talk about it's important to distinguish 535 00:32:05 --> 00:32:10 between two different sorts of language. 536 00:32:10 --> 00:32:16 One would be any natural language that the animal might 537 00:32:16 --> 00:32:21 have on their own -- do animals talk to each other in the 538 00:32:21 --> 00:32:25 absence of humans intervening. 539 00:32:25 --> 00:32:28 The other question is can we teach them our language, can 540 00:32:28 --> 00:32:36 we teach them how to talk like us in some fashion. 541 00:32:36 --> 00:32:41 Within this natural and trained language dichotomy, then it's 542 00:32:41 --> 00:32:45 important to break the question of language down into smaller 543 00:32:45 --> 00:32:50 pieces because otherwise you end up in an endless sterile 544 00:32:50 --> 00:32:51 argument about well, what exactly do you 545 00:32:51 --> 00:32:54 mean by language. 546 00:32:54 --> 00:32:58 If I write a question on the final exam, 547 00:32:58 --> 00:33:00 because it won't be on the mid-term because today's topic 548 00:33:00 --> 00:33:02 is not on the mid-term. 549 00:33:02 --> 00:33:05 If I write a question on the final exam that basically says 550 00:33:05 --> 00:33:10 do animals have language, it would be perfectly possible to 551 00:33:10 --> 00:33:15 write a coherent answer for either the yes or no position. 552 00:33:15 --> 00:33:18 But that would depend on what it is that 553 00:33:18 --> 00:33:19 you mean by language. 554 00:33:19 --> 00:33:21 So let's break this down a little bit. 555 00:33:21 --> 00:33:26 For starters, do animals have something that we 556 00:33:26 --> 00:33:28 could call signals. 557 00:33:28 --> 00:33:33 Do they have sensory stimuli that are communicative 558 00:33:33 --> 00:33:35 in their intent? 559 00:33:35 --> 00:33:40 Well, the answer to that is clearly yes. 560 00:33:40 --> 00:33:46 There's no problem with figuring that out at all. 561 00:33:46 --> 00:33:52 A peacock's tail is a signal to the peahen. 562 00:33:52 --> 00:33:57 Tropical fish -- do tropical fish have all these beautiful 563 00:33:57 --> 00:33:58 colors all over them? 564 00:33:58 --> 00:34:03 Well, the idea is that I'm a tropical fish with, oh, my 565 00:34:03 --> 00:34:08 goodness with stripes on, and I gotta look for another tropical 566 00:34:08 --> 00:34:13 fish with stripes on, because if I mate with one with spots 567 00:34:13 --> 00:34:15 on, nothing's going to happen. 568 00:34:15 --> 00:34:18 But if I mate with one with stripes on, we get more 569 00:34:18 --> 00:34:21 little stripey fish. 570 00:34:21 --> 00:34:24 The peacock tail story is supposed to be slightly 571 00:34:24 --> 00:34:25 more complicated. 572 00:34:25 --> 00:34:29 The standard evolutionary story for peacock tails is that 573 00:34:29 --> 00:34:33 peacock tails are really stupid. 574 00:34:33 --> 00:34:37 They don't help you fly, they make you more likely to 575 00:34:37 --> 00:34:39 get chomped on by a predator and stuff. 576 00:34:39 --> 00:34:43 But a huge investment. 577 00:34:43 --> 00:34:47 What this id is the male peacock saying I am so fit, my 578 00:34:47 --> 00:34:52 genes are so good that I grew this whole thing just 579 00:34:52 --> 00:34:55 for you, honey. 580 00:34:55 --> 00:34:58 You really ought to come and check this out. 581 00:34:58 --> 00:35:01 So it's a signal. 582 00:35:01 --> 00:35:04 It's not just an awful lot of animal signals seem to be 583 00:35:04 --> 00:35:08 about sex and mating issues. 584 00:35:08 --> 00:35:09 Not all of them. 585 00:35:09 --> 00:35:13 So, Vervet monkeys, for instance, have three 586 00:35:13 --> 00:35:17 distinct alarm calls. 587 00:35:17 --> 00:35:19 How do you know they're distinct alarm calls? 588 00:35:19 --> 00:35:23 Well, you go off and record them, and then you get your -- 589 00:35:23 --> 00:35:25 not your iPod because they don't have the little ear -- 590 00:35:25 --> 00:35:28 you get your boom box or something and you play them to 591 00:35:28 --> 00:35:29 a bunch of Vervet monkeys. 592 00:35:29 --> 00:35:34 If you play call number one, all the Vervet monkeys 593 00:35:34 --> 00:35:36 jump up a tree. 594 00:35:36 --> 00:35:39 If you play call number two, all the Vervet monkeys 595 00:35:39 --> 00:35:40 jumps down a hole. 596 00:35:40 --> 00:35:42 If you play number three, they all stand up 597 00:35:42 --> 00:35:43 and look all around. 598 00:35:43 --> 00:35:50 Apparently, what this is about is if you're a Vervet monkey 599 00:35:50 --> 00:35:55 and you see a leopard, you give one scream and everybody 600 00:35:55 --> 00:35:58 jumps up the tree because the leopard can't go up the tree. 601 00:35:58 --> 00:36:02 If you see a hawk or whatever the big predator bird is who 602 00:36:02 --> 00:36:05 eats Vervet monkeys, you give a different screen, you should 603 00:36:05 --> 00:36:08 jump down the hole because the bird ain't going down the hole, 604 00:36:08 --> 00:36:12 and makes you want to just keep an eye out for them. 605 00:36:12 --> 00:36:14 So if somebody thinks they see a snake, everybody else's is 606 00:36:14 --> 00:36:17 just going to look around. 607 00:36:17 --> 00:36:19 There's sort of a three word vocabulary there. 608 00:36:19 --> 00:36:21 It also gets onto the second issue on the handout. 609 00:36:21 --> 00:36:24 610 00:36:24 --> 00:36:26 Yes, it should say meaning. 611 00:36:26 --> 00:36:27 Do these signals have meaning? 612 00:36:27 --> 00:36:27 Well, sure. 613 00:36:27 --> 00:36:31 There's no point to having a signal of this sort if 614 00:36:31 --> 00:36:33 it doesn't have meaning. 615 00:36:33 --> 00:36:35 Well, you could have a signal without meaning. 616 00:36:35 --> 00:36:39 Look, I got a rock here. 617 00:36:39 --> 00:36:47 This crystal could be thought of as signaling its safireness 618 00:36:47 --> 00:36:48 or something like that. 619 00:36:48 --> 00:36:51 But no other safire gives a hoot about it. 620 00:36:51 --> 00:36:53 There's no meaning there from the point of view 621 00:36:53 --> 00:36:55 of the rock, it just is. 622 00:36:55 --> 00:36:59 Whereas, an animal's signals of the sort that we've been 623 00:36:59 --> 00:37:02 talking about clearly have communicative intent. 624 00:37:02 --> 00:37:04 There is a purpose here. 625 00:37:04 --> 00:37:08 It's not even confined just to animals it turns out. 626 00:37:08 --> 00:37:15 There are trees who respond to predator attacks by 627 00:37:15 --> 00:37:18 releasing a chemical. 628 00:37:18 --> 00:37:21 It's all quite a passive kind of thing. 629 00:37:21 --> 00:37:26 The bug chews on the leaves, that ruptures the cells which 630 00:37:26 --> 00:37:30 causes the chemical to be released, which can then be 631 00:37:30 --> 00:37:32 picked up by the next tree over. 632 00:37:32 --> 00:37:36 The next tree over in reponse now mobilizes a defense 633 00:37:36 --> 00:37:38 against that predator. 634 00:37:38 --> 00:37:42 So, in a sense, the trees are talking to each other. 635 00:37:42 --> 00:37:47 There's a signal there and it's being received. 636 00:37:47 --> 00:37:52 So, no doubt that the animal kingdom has signals. 637 00:37:52 --> 00:37:57 The equivalent in human language would be phoneme. 638 00:37:57 --> 00:38:02 No doubt that these signals have meaning, at least in some 639 00:38:02 --> 00:38:05 cases, and that could be considered to be sort of the 640 00:38:05 --> 00:38:07 equivalent of morpheme. 641 00:38:07 --> 00:38:09 642 00:38:09 --> 00:38:10 What about human language? 643 00:38:10 --> 00:38:14 What about training an animal to use human language? 644 00:38:14 --> 00:38:21 Could be the case that the only reason that a chimp, who is a 645 00:38:21 --> 00:38:26 close relation of ours, hasn't talked to us is because 646 00:38:26 --> 00:38:28 nobody talked to him. 647 00:38:28 --> 00:38:32 So back in the '30s, the Hayes's, a couple in Salt 648 00:38:32 --> 00:38:34 Lake City as I recall, tried this out. 649 00:38:34 --> 00:38:39 What they did was they had a kid, [? Maracatridas. ?] 650 00:38:39 --> 00:38:41 They had a kid, they got a chimp. 651 00:38:41 --> 00:38:44 They said we'll raise the two of them identically. 652 00:38:44 --> 00:38:46 I don't know, the chimp might sleep through the night sooner. 653 00:38:46 --> 00:38:49 654 00:38:49 --> 00:38:52 They'll talk to the kid, they'll talk to the chimp. 655 00:38:52 --> 00:38:56 After how long? 656 00:38:56 --> 00:38:58 It doesn't say how long they were at it. 657 00:38:58 --> 00:39:01 You don't want to do this for too long because after awhile, 658 00:39:01 --> 00:39:06 raising your chimp just hanging around in the play room with 659 00:39:06 --> 00:39:11 your a kid, is not going to be good for the kid, because the 660 00:39:11 --> 00:39:16 chimp may not talk a lot, but the chimp grows big and strong 661 00:39:16 --> 00:39:20 and will play with your kid in ways that your kid 662 00:39:20 --> 00:39:22 will not enjoy. 663 00:39:22 --> 00:39:26 But the chimp didn't talk. 664 00:39:26 --> 00:39:31 This is important, because any neurologically normal child 665 00:39:31 --> 00:39:35 raised in a linguistic environment will talk, will 666 00:39:35 --> 00:39:42 learn to talk, or if deaf will communicate, you and given 667 00:39:42 --> 00:39:46 appropriate input will communicate in other ways. 668 00:39:46 --> 00:39:54 The chimp is reputed to have said, I think mamma, papa 669 00:39:54 --> 00:39:58 and cup, and that was it. 670 00:39:58 --> 00:40:03 Now, one of the problems here that was quickly identified is 671 00:40:03 --> 00:40:07 that the chimp's vocal apparatus is not like yours and 672 00:40:07 --> 00:40:13 mine and is poorly designed to make the range of human phoneme 673 00:40:13 --> 00:40:17 that are important in human language. 674 00:40:17 --> 00:40:25 So, it occured to subsequent researchers to try using sign 675 00:40:25 --> 00:40:31 language with chimps because chimps are very good with their 676 00:40:31 --> 00:40:34 hands -- there's no problem making the sort of gestures, 677 00:40:34 --> 00:40:37 there's no physical limitation on the soft to gestures 678 00:40:37 --> 00:40:41 that the chimps could make or gorillas. 679 00:40:41 --> 00:40:46 Limited work with orangutans who turn out to be big 680 00:40:46 --> 00:40:48 and lazy, I understand. 681 00:40:48 --> 00:40:55 But chimps, Bonobo chimps and gorillas all make good signers. 682 00:40:55 --> 00:40:59 683 00:40:59 --> 00:41:03 So most of the effort to teach human language to primates has 684 00:41:03 --> 00:41:09 involved sign language or computer keyboard arrangements 685 00:41:09 --> 00:41:13 where you're sort of teaching the animal to type, in a 686 00:41:13 --> 00:41:19 sense, rather than to sign. 687 00:41:19 --> 00:41:25 Now it's true that chimps don't have the vocal apparatus to 688 00:41:25 --> 00:41:27 talk the way you and I talk. 689 00:41:27 --> 00:41:32 But that couldn't be the whole story, because if you have a 690 00:41:32 --> 00:41:35 child born with something congenital malformation that 691 00:41:35 --> 00:41:39 makes it impossible for them to talk properly, that child 692 00:41:39 --> 00:41:44 will talk badly but will talk and will learn a language. 693 00:41:44 --> 00:41:49 A chimp in the same situation will simply not talk. 694 00:41:49 --> 00:41:53 There is a fundamental difference in the way that the 695 00:41:53 --> 00:41:58 chimp and the child are responding to linguistic input. 696 00:41:58 --> 00:42:02 697 00:42:02 --> 00:42:06 So, can you teach it to sign? 698 00:42:06 --> 00:42:06 Yes. 699 00:42:06 --> 00:42:08 Actually, you can teach them to sign. 700 00:42:08 --> 00:42:13 They've got a whole string of chimps who do really quite well 701 00:42:13 --> 00:42:22 with vocabulary on the order of hundreds up signs that seem 702 00:42:22 --> 00:42:25 to have discreet meaning. 703 00:42:25 --> 00:42:28 It's not limited even to chimps. 704 00:42:28 --> 00:42:33 Irene Pepperberg who was here for a while, is now a Fellow at 705 00:42:33 --> 00:42:38 Harvard this year, has made a career out of studying 706 00:42:38 --> 00:42:40 African Grey parrots. 707 00:42:40 --> 00:42:44 It's a not terribly dramatic, nice looking little parrot with 708 00:42:44 --> 00:42:47 a nice little bird brain. 709 00:42:47 --> 00:42:50 The nice thing, of course, about parrots is that they can 710 00:42:50 --> 00:42:55 form the sounds -- they're pretty good with the phoneme, 711 00:42:55 --> 00:42:57 Polly want a cracker and all that sort of stuff. 712 00:42:57 --> 00:42:59 But they're also remarkably bright. 713 00:42:59 --> 00:43:02 714 00:43:02 --> 00:43:08 Alex, her great African Grey has a vocabulary on the order 715 00:43:08 --> 00:43:17 of 50 to 100 words, I think, that he can use in various 716 00:43:17 --> 00:43:20 and reasonable ways. 717 00:43:20 --> 00:43:27 So if Irene says to Alex, pick up the blue thing or the blue 718 00:43:27 --> 00:43:32 one, Alex will toddle over and grab a blue thing. 719 00:43:32 --> 00:43:34 If you say get the truck, it'll go get the truck 720 00:43:34 --> 00:43:35 and stuff like that. 721 00:43:35 --> 00:43:41 It clearly has the grasp of vocabulary and ability to use 722 00:43:41 --> 00:43:47 it in some fashion or other. 723 00:43:47 --> 00:43:48 Mostly trained. 724 00:43:48 --> 00:43:49 Almost all 725 00:43:49 --> 00:43:54 of the examples of animal use of a human language, any 726 00:43:54 --> 00:43:57 aspect of a human language, are heavily trained. 727 00:43:57 --> 00:44:00 Again, that's different from a little kid where a little kid 728 00:44:00 --> 00:44:05 will pick up a language just by being around speakers. 729 00:44:05 --> 00:44:12 There are a couple of instances now in the literature where 730 00:44:12 --> 00:44:16 children, the offspring of signing apes have picked 731 00:44:16 --> 00:44:18 up signing on their own. 732 00:44:18 --> 00:44:20 So it may, in fact, be the case that you don't 733 00:44:20 --> 00:44:23 need explicit training. 734 00:44:23 --> 00:44:32 But what does seem to be the case is that chimps and parrots 735 00:44:32 --> 00:44:39 can use what you'd probably consider to be morpheme -- 736 00:44:39 --> 00:44:42 signs with meaning of some sort. 737 00:44:42 --> 00:44:45 There are issues about the data quality. 738 00:44:45 --> 00:44:52 So if you point to something, if you point to this banana and 739 00:44:52 --> 00:44:57 ask one of signing apes what it is, you'll probably get banana 740 00:44:57 --> 00:45:01 but you might get something out like banana, banana, me tickle, 741 00:45:01 --> 00:45:04 banana, you tickle me, banana, banana or something. 742 00:45:04 --> 00:45:09 You might wonder whether or not you should code that as banana. 743 00:45:09 --> 00:45:12 744 00:45:12 --> 00:45:16 I saw one description that said that chimps tend to run on at 745 00:45:16 --> 00:45:20 the hands -- you know, the expression that somebody 746 00:45:20 --> 00:45:21 runs on at the mouth. 747 00:45:21 --> 00:45:26 Well, chimps sign a lot, these signing chimps, perhaps because 748 00:45:26 --> 00:45:28 they're playing the same guessing game that we're 749 00:45:28 --> 00:45:30 all playing with language. 750 00:45:30 --> 00:45:32 What does this guy want from me? 751 00:45:32 --> 00:45:35 What's he trying to -- pointing at that thing, oh yes. 752 00:45:35 --> 00:45:40 If I make these banana signs, maybe a few other signs in 753 00:45:40 --> 00:45:43 there, good things will happen, he'll be happy with me and 754 00:45:43 --> 00:45:45 maybe we'll get good stuff. 755 00:45:45 --> 00:45:51 So, in any case, we've got evidence for signals, 756 00:45:51 --> 00:45:53 we've got evidence that they have meaning. 757 00:45:53 --> 00:45:55 How about grammar? 758 00:45:55 --> 00:46:00 Is there any evidence for grammar in animals? 759 00:46:00 --> 00:46:02 Things get thinner there. 760 00:46:02 --> 00:46:09 Recall that you can use grammatical information to get 761 00:46:09 --> 00:46:11 yourself into the meaning of an utterance, even if 762 00:46:11 --> 00:46:13 you don't really--. 763 00:46:13 --> 00:46:14 Did I put it on the handout? 764 00:46:14 --> 00:46:17 "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously," which I think is a 765 00:46:17 --> 00:46:23 Chomsky-ism originally designed to point out that purely 766 00:46:23 --> 00:46:30 syntactic information tells you something, even without much in 767 00:46:30 --> 00:46:33 the way of, you know how that sentence put together. 768 00:46:33 --> 00:46:35 Actually, this goes back before that. 769 00:46:35 --> 00:46:38 How many of you are great Alice In Wonderland fans from 770 00:46:38 --> 00:46:41 your youth at some point? 771 00:46:41 --> 00:46:43 Oh, very limited. 772 00:46:43 --> 00:46:46 So, most people cannot sit here and quote back to me "'Twas 773 00:46:46 --> 00:46:50 Brillig and the slithy toves, did gyre and gimble in the 774 00:46:50 --> 00:46:53 wabe, all mimsy were the borogoves and the mome raths 775 00:46:53 --> 00:46:57 outgrabe." You have no idea what that's about. 776 00:46:57 --> 00:46:59 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. 777 00:46:59 --> 00:47:02 PROFESSOR: It's the Jabberwocky poem in 778 00:47:02 --> 00:47:04 Through The Looking Glass? 779 00:47:04 --> 00:47:07 I think it's the Looking Glass. 780 00:47:07 --> 00:47:10 Anyway, it's in one of the two Alice books. 781 00:47:10 --> 00:47:14 But the interesting thing about it is even though you have no 782 00:47:14 --> 00:47:19 idea "'Twas Billig and the slithy toves, did gyre and 783 00:47:19 --> 00:47:21 gimble in the wabe." You, what? 784 00:47:21 --> 00:47:24 Well, but you know that now that there are some 785 00:47:24 --> 00:47:26 things cold toves. 786 00:47:26 --> 00:47:30 They have the attribute of slithiness. 787 00:47:30 --> 00:47:36 They can do things that are apparently gyring and gimbling. 788 00:47:36 --> 00:47:40 You can say things like gyring and gimbling -- i-n-g'ing these 789 00:47:40 --> 00:47:44 things, even though I got no idea what this verb means, 790 00:47:44 --> 00:47:45 you just know it's a verb. 791 00:47:45 --> 00:47:48 So that's the sort of power of the grammar of the 792 00:47:48 --> 00:47:50 syntax of the language. 793 00:47:50 --> 00:47:55 To what extent do animals have a grip on that? 794 00:47:55 --> 00:47:59 The answer seems to be a pretty limited grip. 795 00:47:59 --> 00:48:08 There is evidence for word order sensitivity in animal 796 00:48:08 --> 00:48:10 signing, for instance. 797 00:48:10 --> 00:48:20 So you can have the chimp equivalent of John hit 798 00:48:20 --> 00:48:25 Mary being different from Mary hit John. 799 00:48:25 --> 00:48:30 Those are the same word, different order, 800 00:48:30 --> 00:48:32 different meaning. 801 00:48:32 --> 00:48:34 Chimps will show a sensitivity to that. 802 00:48:34 --> 00:48:40 In fact, when this was a hot issue and people were arguing 803 00:48:40 --> 00:48:45 about it vociferously, Epstein up at Harvard who was one of 804 00:48:45 --> 00:48:47 Skinner's last students, used to have a great time trying to 805 00:48:47 --> 00:48:52 do these fancy chimp language demonstrations with pigeons. 806 00:48:52 --> 00:48:55 He showed that sure enough, you could get a pigeon to 807 00:48:55 --> 00:49:00 understand that you got a bunch of colored keys in your Skinner 808 00:49:00 --> 00:49:07 box, that if I pick red, green, blue I get food, but if I do 809 00:49:07 --> 00:49:11 blue, green, red I get water, and the pigeon would respond 810 00:49:11 --> 00:49:12 appropriately to that. 811 00:49:12 --> 00:49:18 So order information is there in chimp signing and it's in 812 00:49:18 --> 00:49:20 there in other behaviors too. 813 00:49:20 --> 00:49:24 There's order information, structural information in 814 00:49:24 --> 00:49:27 natural animal language, too. 815 00:49:27 --> 00:49:33 It's not just ah means snake or something like that. 816 00:49:33 --> 00:49:36 So, for example, bees. 817 00:49:36 --> 00:49:45 How many of you have seen the waggle dance of bees? 818 00:49:45 --> 00:49:47 It's pretty thin stuff here. 819 00:49:47 --> 00:49:50 You get in free to the science museum here, I believe, 820 00:49:50 --> 00:49:52 as MIT students. 821 00:49:52 --> 00:49:57 Sometime, like Friday when you're done with the mid-term 822 00:49:57 --> 00:49:59 or something, you want to go over to the science museum, you 823 00:49:59 --> 00:50:02 go up to the third floor, fourth floor where 824 00:50:02 --> 00:50:02 the library is. 825 00:50:02 --> 00:50:04 They got a beehive there. 826 00:50:04 --> 00:50:07 If you look at this beehive -- it's a big glass plane so you 827 00:50:07 --> 00:50:10 can look in on it -- what you will see, not so much at the 828 00:50:10 --> 00:50:12 time of year because they're all going to bed at this point. 829 00:50:12 --> 00:50:19 But anyway, what you'll see is a bee who will be marching up 830 00:50:19 --> 00:50:28 the hive with a characteristic waggle of her backside, and 831 00:50:28 --> 00:50:35 then looping back down and repeating this while a whole 832 00:50:35 --> 00:50:37 bunch of other bees are gathered around -- it's easy to 833 00:50:37 --> 00:50:42 find because typically there's sort of a circle of 834 00:50:42 --> 00:50:45 bees watching this. 835 00:50:45 --> 00:50:50 This is a highly structured bit of communication about where 836 00:50:50 --> 00:50:53 to go to look for food. 837 00:50:53 --> 00:50:58 I didn't go off and review my waggle dance information, but 838 00:50:58 --> 00:51:03 I'm pretty sure that memory serves correctly to say that 839 00:51:03 --> 00:51:07 the length of the vector here gives information about 840 00:51:07 --> 00:51:10 how far you've got to go. 841 00:51:10 --> 00:51:13 That the direction of the vector is giving you 842 00:51:13 --> 00:51:18 orientation relative to the sun about which direction to fly. 843 00:51:18 --> 00:51:24 I think amplitude of the waggle is telling you about the 844 00:51:24 --> 00:51:28 magnitude of the food source -- how good is this stuff. 845 00:51:28 --> 00:51:31 846 00:51:31 --> 00:51:32 Got any waggle dance experts? 847 00:51:32 --> 00:51:35 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE PHRASE]. 848 00:51:35 --> 00:51:36 PROFESSOR: An altitude 849 00:51:36 --> 00:51:37 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE PHRASE]. 850 00:51:37 --> 00:51:41 851 00:51:41 --> 00:51:43 PROFESSOR: Signaling how high you should fly? 852 00:51:43 --> 00:51:46 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE PHRASE]. 853 00:51:46 --> 00:51:46 PROFESSOR: That's cool. 854 00:51:46 --> 00:51:48 I didn't know that. 855 00:51:48 --> 00:51:50 Why would they care? 856 00:51:50 --> 00:51:52 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE PHRASE]. 857 00:51:52 --> 00:51:55 PROFESSOR: Oh, of course. 858 00:51:55 --> 00:51:58 Not all the flowers are just lying on the ground. 859 00:51:58 --> 00:52:01 Particularly in Boston, it could be a roof garden. 860 00:52:01 --> 00:52:02 In any case, that's cool. 861 00:52:02 --> 00:52:04 But you don't remember what the signal is? 862 00:52:04 --> 00:52:04 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. 863 00:52:04 --> 00:52:08 AUDIENCE: The looping back piece contains information 864 00:52:08 --> 00:52:10 too, but I don't remember what that is. 865 00:52:10 --> 00:52:13 Very clever research that people do one this. 866 00:52:13 --> 00:52:17 It's a lovely body of literature. 867 00:52:17 --> 00:52:24 But in any case, very structured and full of a 868 00:52:24 --> 00:52:29 sort of native grammar. 869 00:52:29 --> 00:52:34 But it's pretty limited stuff. 870 00:52:34 --> 00:52:38 871 00:52:38 --> 00:52:43 The newest evidence for what the limitation might be that 872 00:52:43 --> 00:52:48 makes animal grammar fundamentally different from 873 00:52:48 --> 00:52:53 your grammar and my grammar comes from an experiment 874 00:52:53 --> 00:52:54 by -- that I think I put on the handout. 875 00:52:54 --> 00:52:58 Yeah, new paper by Fitch and Hauser where they basically 876 00:52:58 --> 00:53:04 were teaching grammatical structures to primates, to 877 00:53:04 --> 00:53:06 non-human the primates. 878 00:53:06 --> 00:53:10 879 00:53:10 --> 00:53:11 They were pretty good. 880 00:53:11 --> 00:53:14 They were doing fine on the John hit Mary is different 881 00:53:14 --> 00:53:16 from the Mary hit John part. 882 00:53:16 --> 00:53:20 But it was nested construction that they simply 883 00:53:20 --> 00:53:23 never managed to get. 884 00:53:23 --> 00:53:31 So, Mary who was engaged to Sam hit John. 885 00:53:31 --> 00:53:35 That's perfectly fine for you, sticking one 886 00:53:35 --> 00:53:37 clause inside another. 887 00:53:37 --> 00:53:41 That was stuff that they could just never manage to get their 888 00:53:41 --> 00:53:44 primates to pick up on. 889 00:53:44 --> 00:53:48 Now this is not an argument -- Hauser in particular is not 890 00:53:48 --> 00:53:53 somebody who spends a lot of time arguing that apes are 891 00:53:53 --> 00:53:56 stupid or something like that. 892 00:53:56 --> 00:54:00 The great apes are remarkably clever beasts. 893 00:54:00 --> 00:54:06 In studying them you find cognitive abilities not 894 00:54:06 --> 00:54:09 unlike a lot of our cognitive abilities. 895 00:54:09 --> 00:54:11 I don't think it's a Hauser experiment, but one of the ones 896 00:54:11 --> 00:54:14 that comes to mind, that I could have talked about in the 897 00:54:14 --> 00:54:18 context of egocentric behavior before, is that important 898 00:54:18 --> 00:54:25 landmark in your mental development was when you 899 00:54:25 --> 00:54:27 learned how to lie. 900 00:54:27 --> 00:54:29 901 00:54:29 --> 00:54:32 It's another one of these ones that didn't necessarily get a 902 00:54:32 --> 00:54:35 lot of positive reinforcement from your parents when you 903 00:54:35 --> 00:54:37 demonstrated it to them. 904 00:54:37 --> 00:54:39 But it is an important cognitive landmark because it 905 00:54:39 --> 00:54:44 says I know that what's in here is not what's in 906 00:54:44 --> 00:54:46 there, in your head. 907 00:54:46 --> 00:54:49 I could tell you something that I know is bogus 908 00:54:49 --> 00:54:52 and you'll believe it. 909 00:54:52 --> 00:54:54 Monkeys can do that too. 910 00:54:54 --> 00:54:55 How do you know this? 911 00:54:55 --> 00:54:58 Well, I can't remember who did the experiment, but he set up 912 00:54:58 --> 00:55:07 this clever experiment with a good person and a bad person. 913 00:55:07 --> 00:55:11 The monkey knows both of these people. 914 00:55:11 --> 00:55:22 Both of these people have access to these boxes of stuff. 915 00:55:22 --> 00:55:24 The monkey sometimes has access to the box of stuff. 916 00:55:24 --> 00:55:27 When the monkey gets access, he can look under the box 917 00:55:27 --> 00:55:29 and he finds the banana. 918 00:55:29 --> 00:55:29 Oh, cool. 919 00:55:29 --> 00:55:30 Great. 920 00:55:30 --> 00:55:32 Or the grapes or there's nothing under there, 921 00:55:32 --> 00:55:33 that's boring. 922 00:55:33 --> 00:55:36 Now the monkey's on the other side of the cage 923 00:55:36 --> 00:55:38 and here's the stuff. 924 00:55:38 --> 00:55:42 If the good guy comes in, he looks under one of these 925 00:55:42 --> 00:55:47 things, finds the banana and he shares it with the monkey. 926 00:55:47 --> 00:55:51 If the bad guy comes in, looks, finds the banana, he eats it 927 00:55:51 --> 00:55:54 and doesn't give the monkey any. 928 00:55:54 --> 00:55:59 So now, do this a few times -- monkey's got this bit down. 929 00:55:59 --> 00:56:06 Now a third party comes in and baits one of these two wells 930 00:56:06 --> 00:56:09 -- puts the banana under one of them. 931 00:56:09 --> 00:56:15 Now if the good guy comes in what does the monkey do? 932 00:56:15 --> 00:56:17 The monkey basically says look there. 933 00:56:17 --> 00:56:20 You only get the look there, that's where you want to look. 934 00:56:20 --> 00:56:23 The bad guy comes in, what's the monkey do? 935 00:56:23 --> 00:56:27 Let's look there. 936 00:56:27 --> 00:56:30 Monkeys will also do this to each other, 937 00:56:30 --> 00:56:32 apparently, in the wild. 938 00:56:32 --> 00:56:39 There's a version where you stash stuff around a field and 939 00:56:39 --> 00:56:44 -- now how does it work that the monkey lies to his friends? 940 00:56:44 --> 00:56:48 You arrange for monkey one to discover the good stash. 941 00:56:48 --> 00:56:52 Then this monkey in some fashion goes off and tells his 942 00:56:52 --> 00:56:54 buddies, go look over there -- the good stuff's over here. 943 00:56:54 --> 00:56:55 The monkey's, you guys go over there. 944 00:56:55 --> 00:56:57 And he goes and eats all the bananas. 945 00:56:57 --> 00:57:04 So, they're clever animals, but there do seem to be fundamental 946 00:57:04 --> 00:57:08 differences that you don't get around. 947 00:57:08 --> 00:57:11 At least nobody's figured out how to get around them yet. 948 00:57:11 --> 00:57:17 Nobody has figured a way how to get monkeys to anything like 949 00:57:17 --> 00:57:21 the richness of the grammar that human language has. 950 00:57:21 --> 00:57:25 The result of this is that even if you want to concede -- this 951 00:57:25 --> 00:57:27 is why you can answer both ways to the do animals 952 00:57:27 --> 00:57:28 have language. 953 00:57:28 --> 00:57:32 Suppose you decide that all you want is some evidence for 954 00:57:32 --> 00:57:36 phonemes, morphemes and an ability to be sensitive 955 00:57:36 --> 00:57:37 to structure. 956 00:57:37 --> 00:57:40 Well, yeah, there's some evidence that chimps can 957 00:57:40 --> 00:57:41 do that, for instance. 958 00:57:41 --> 00:57:46 But the hurdle of developing a productive language, a language 959 00:57:46 --> 00:57:56 where you can say new stuff, that does not seem to be a 960 00:57:56 --> 00:58:01 hurdle that any non-human species gets over in either 961 00:58:01 --> 00:58:06 natural language or in trained language. 962 00:58:06 --> 00:58:11 So, bees -- great sophisticated stuff, but no evidence that the 963 00:58:11 --> 00:58:15 bee ever learns to talk about anything new with this. 964 00:58:15 --> 00:58:18 The bee doesn't get to -- they don't get to sit around and 965 00:58:18 --> 00:58:22 apparently muse about, remember last year? 966 00:58:22 --> 00:58:28 Remember that patch of flowers that was over there? 967 00:58:28 --> 00:58:31 At least nobody to my knowledge has ever found the past 968 00:58:31 --> 00:58:33 tense in waggle or anything. 969 00:58:33 --> 00:58:39 It's their up to a limit, but not further. 970 00:58:39 --> 00:58:45 Now, what I will do is take a momentary break here, say a 971 00:58:45 --> 00:58:49 word about why does this matter, and then what I'll do 972 00:58:49 --> 00:58:54 is entertain mid-term questions for a few minutes before 973 00:58:54 --> 00:58:56 the end of the hour. 974 00:58:56 --> 00:58:59 So, take a quick stretch and then let's come back and 975 00:58:59 --> 00:59:00 finish things up here. 976 00:59:00 --> 00:59:10 977 00:59:10 --> 00:59:14 Why does it matter? 978 00:59:14 --> 00:59:24 This has been a very contentious topic, moreso than 979 00:59:24 --> 00:59:27 many -- people argue about visual attention, but people 980 00:59:27 --> 00:59:32 don't get really agitated about it like it's a moral issue. 981 00:59:32 --> 00:59:37 People get agitated about animal language like it is a 982 00:59:37 --> 00:59:43 moral issue, because in some fashion it is -- it is not 983 00:59:43 --> 00:59:47 itself a moral issue, but it impinges on issues that have 984 00:59:47 --> 00:59:50 more to do with morality than with science. 985 00:59:50 --> 00:59:53 Well, you could couch it in theological terms, if you like. 986 00:59:53 --> 00:59:59 In Psalms, the psalmist asks rhetorically at some point 987 00:59:59 --> 01:00:04 of God, What is man that you are mindful of him? 988 01:00:04 --> 01:00:11 What is it that makes us so special that we're different 989 01:00:11 --> 01:00:15 from all these animal things out there. 990 01:00:15 --> 01:00:17 991 01:00:17 --> 01:00:23 That's the question that becomes difficult if there is 992 01:00:23 --> 01:00:29 not at nice clean, qualitative difference between what an 993 01:00:29 --> 01:00:32 animal is and what us is. 994 01:00:32 --> 01:00:38 This was one of the reasons why the advent of the theory of 995 01:00:38 --> 01:00:45 evolution was so problematic because it suggested that 996 01:00:45 --> 01:00:49 species were not completely distinct and that we were 997 01:00:49 --> 01:00:52 somehow a completely separate sort of creation, but that 998 01:00:52 --> 01:00:55 there was a continuity between all forms of animal life 999 01:00:55 --> 01:00:59 up to and including us. 1000 01:00:59 --> 01:01:06 If that's the case, who is it that gets the sort of rights 1001 01:01:06 --> 01:01:10 and privileges that we would arrogate to ourselves, and who 1002 01:01:10 --> 01:01:15 is it that we get to treat like animals? 1003 01:01:15 --> 01:01:18 The search for a nice clear -- I'm not going to give you the 1004 01:01:18 --> 01:01:21 answer to this because there is, at least in my view, there 1005 01:01:21 --> 01:01:25 is no nice sharp, dividing line that gives you a nice 1006 01:01:25 --> 01:01:26 clean answer to this. 1007 01:01:26 --> 01:01:29 But to search for a nice clean answer could include, 1008 01:01:29 --> 01:01:32 well, who can talk to us? 1009 01:01:32 --> 01:01:37 Maybe the ability to speak or communicate in a linguistic 1010 01:01:37 --> 01:01:39 way is the critical division. 1011 01:01:39 --> 01:01:41 Because I mean look, think about it in terms of 1012 01:01:41 --> 01:01:43 what you would eat. 1013 01:01:43 --> 01:01:50 If it were the case that you'll walk out into the field and the 1014 01:01:50 --> 01:01:55 cow can talk to you and carry on a conversation, even sort of 1015 01:01:55 --> 01:01:58 a simple conversation, a child-like conversation. 1016 01:01:58 --> 01:02:02 Good grass, like grass, nice grass. 1017 01:02:02 --> 01:02:05 What's the chance that you're going to eat him? 1018 01:02:05 --> 01:02:09 It doesn't feel quite right anymore. 1019 01:02:09 --> 01:02:10 It's not just language. 1020 01:02:10 --> 01:02:13 We don't like to eat things that we get to know. 1021 01:02:13 --> 01:02:17 Language is a good way to get to know something. 1022 01:02:17 --> 01:02:21 Third grade at the moment reading Charlotte's Web. 1023 01:02:21 --> 01:02:23 How many of you read Charlotte's Web at some point? 1024 01:02:23 --> 01:02:26 Oh, good, it's still a classic out there. 1025 01:02:26 --> 01:02:28 It's an issue about language and who you're going 1026 01:02:28 --> 01:02:29 to get to eat. 1027 01:02:29 --> 01:02:36 There's a great one in the little Jewish kid repertoire 1028 01:02:36 --> 01:02:42 called The Carp in the Bathtub where a big -- a Carp is 1029 01:02:42 --> 01:02:45 basically an overgrown Goldfish -- thing comes home and is 1030 01:02:45 --> 01:02:49 living in the bathtub and the kids love it but this thing is 1031 01:02:49 --> 01:02:53 intended to be food, and sad things happen to the Carp. 1032 01:02:53 --> 01:02:56 1033 01:02:56 --> 01:02:58 Things that are close to you are not things that you want 1034 01:02:58 --> 01:03:02 to kill, not things that you necessarily want to hurt. 1035 01:03:02 --> 01:03:10 So, how you draw that line is important. 1036 01:03:10 --> 01:03:14 If you could argue that it is absolutely the case that 1037 01:03:14 --> 01:03:18 there's human language ability and animals just don't 1038 01:03:18 --> 01:03:19 got it at all--. 1039 01:03:19 --> 01:03:22 Another realm where this was tried was humans are tool users 1040 01:03:22 --> 01:03:24 and animals just aren't. 1041 01:03:24 --> 01:03:25 There's a sharp division there. 1042 01:03:25 --> 01:03:26 We can see it. 1043 01:03:26 --> 01:03:29 It makes these sorts of discussions somewhat easier. 1044 01:03:29 --> 01:03:32 It doesn't make them a lot easier necessarily. 1045 01:03:32 --> 01:03:37 Because look, if you have a human child who has a 1046 01:03:37 --> 01:03:41 congenital neurological problem that means that that child will 1047 01:03:41 --> 01:03:45 never speak -- the kid's mentally retarded in some 1048 01:03:45 --> 01:03:46 fashion, is never going to speak. 1049 01:03:46 --> 01:03:49 That doesn't mean you can eat him or anything of the sort. 1050 01:03:49 --> 01:03:52 That's obvious sick nonsense. 1051 01:03:52 --> 01:03:56 So it's not a simple division. 1052 01:03:56 --> 01:04:03 But the efforts to figure out what makes us distinctively 1053 01:04:03 --> 01:04:12 human, and as a result, who do human rights extend to is a 1054 01:04:12 --> 01:04:16 serious problem, one that I'm not going to attempt to solve 1055 01:04:16 --> 01:04:22 here, but one that is certainly worth your ongoing 1056 01:04:22 --> 01:04:23 consideration. 1057 01:04:23 --> 01:04:28 What I will attempt to solve here for the remaining 10, 15 1058 01:04:28 --> 01:04:32 minutes or so, is I will dutifully attempt to answer any 1059 01:04:32 --> 01:04:36 questions about the mid-term that you might have at 1060 01:04:36 --> 01:04:37 the present moment. 1061 01:04:37 --> 01:04:45 1062 01:04:45 --> 01:04:50 A couple of people asked me, is it a hard mid-term? 1063 01:04:50 --> 01:04:55 The answer is that the first two TAs who read it, 1064 01:04:55 --> 01:04:58 said boy, this is easy. 1065 01:04:58 --> 01:05:03 The second two TAs who read it, said boy, this is hard. 1066 01:05:03 --> 01:05:07 Sadly, the distinction between the first two TAs and the 1067 01:05:07 --> 01:05:10 second two TAs in this case was the first two TAs had TA'ed the 1068 01:05:10 --> 01:05:15 course last year and had been through this once before 1069 01:05:15 --> 01:05:16 and the other ones hadn't. 1070 01:05:16 --> 01:05:19 So, you may use that tidbit of information 1071 01:05:19 --> 01:05:21 in any way you see fit. 1072 01:05:21 --> 01:05:23 What other tidbits of information can I 1073 01:05:23 --> 01:05:24 provide for you? 1074 01:05:24 --> 01:05:27 1075 01:05:27 --> 01:05:29 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE PHRASE]. 1076 01:05:29 --> 01:05:32 PROFESSOR: The closed class and open class words, 1077 01:05:32 --> 01:05:34 it's on today's handout. 1078 01:05:34 --> 01:05:38 I think I mentioned this last time, but let me reiterate that 1079 01:05:38 --> 01:05:42 closed class, so it was on last time so it's fair game 1080 01:05:42 --> 01:05:44 for the mid-term. 1081 01:05:44 --> 01:05:51 Closed class words are words that serve grammaticals and 1082 01:05:51 --> 01:05:59 tactical roles and do not -- the, and, uh -- words that 1083 01:05:59 --> 01:06:02 don't have a definition in any straightforward sense, 1084 01:06:02 --> 01:06:06 except to explain that the means noun is a-comin'. 1085 01:06:06 --> 01:06:09 And means I'm joining a couple of things together. 1086 01:06:09 --> 01:06:12 1087 01:06:12 --> 01:06:14 Open class words are the other ones. 1088 01:06:14 --> 01:06:16 Closed class, it's a much smaller set. 1089 01:06:16 --> 01:06:22 The closed class words are a very small set and the open 1090 01:06:22 --> 01:06:25 class set is the set of all other words that fill up the 1091 01:06:25 --> 01:06:27 dictionary and everything else. 1092 01:06:27 --> 01:06:29 1093 01:06:29 --> 01:06:32 So I think that's what you need to know about that. 1094 01:06:32 --> 01:06:34 Oh, the other thing to know about it is the closed class 1095 01:06:34 --> 01:06:36 words are what shows up when you get beyond the two word 1096 01:06:36 --> 01:06:40 stage in language development. 1097 01:06:40 --> 01:06:45 Little kids, two word stage kids don't say "the ball." 1098 01:06:45 --> 01:06:48 They say "Go ball" or something like that. 1099 01:06:48 --> 01:06:55 But when they start to say "I see the cat," longer 1100 01:06:55 --> 01:06:57 utterances, that's when you start getting these closed 1101 01:06:57 --> 01:06:59 class things coming in. 1102 01:06:59 --> 01:07:02 OK, what else you need to know? 1103 01:07:02 --> 01:07:04 Everybody knows everything, this is great. 1104 01:07:04 --> 01:07:04 What? 1105 01:07:04 --> 01:07:06 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE PHRASE]. 1106 01:07:06 --> 01:07:12 1107 01:07:12 --> 01:07:15 PROFESSOR: If you look at the exam from years past, the 1108 01:07:15 --> 01:07:16 mix roughly comparable. 1109 01:07:16 --> 01:07:21 I didn't actually check. 1110 01:07:21 --> 01:07:24 There's sort of an interesting push-pull here. 1111 01:07:24 --> 01:07:28 The longer answers are worth 10 points, so if I write long 1112 01:07:28 --> 01:07:34 answer questions, I can get done writing the exam faster. 1113 01:07:34 --> 01:07:35 I don't have to write as many questions. 1114 01:07:35 --> 01:07:38 The short answer questions, the multiple choice questions 1115 01:07:38 --> 01:07:40 are a lot easier to grade. 1116 01:07:40 --> 01:07:44 So if I write a lot of those it's an easier test to grade, 1117 01:07:44 --> 01:07:50 and so the mix of those two pressures leads me to sort 1118 01:07:50 --> 01:07:53 of the usual mix, I think. 1119 01:07:53 --> 01:07:55 It didn't look weird, did it? 1120 01:07:55 --> 01:07:56 No. 1121 01:07:56 --> 01:07:58 Kind of the usual, some of each. 1122 01:07:58 --> 01:08:02 1123 01:08:02 --> 01:08:03 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE PHRASE]? 1124 01:08:03 --> 01:08:06 1125 01:08:06 --> 01:08:08 PROFESSOR: The ones of you who come here will. 1126 01:08:08 --> 01:08:11 The ones who sleep late -- at least it's taught 1127 01:08:11 --> 01:08:11 in the afternoon here. 1128 01:08:11 --> 01:08:14 Most of the people make it awake. 1129 01:08:14 --> 01:08:16 Is the final in the morning or in the afternoon? 1130 01:08:16 --> 01:08:17 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. 1131 01:08:17 --> 01:08:19 PROFESSOR: Morning? 1132 01:08:19 --> 01:08:19 Afternoon. 1133 01:08:19 --> 01:08:20 Oh good. 1134 01:08:20 --> 01:08:23 Whenever it's in the morning there's all these sad people 1135 01:08:23 --> 01:08:26 who traipse in an hour and a half late with some great story 1136 01:08:26 --> 01:08:29 about I woke up when my alarm clock woke me up but then I 1137 01:08:29 --> 01:08:32 went back to sleep and I had a dream that I was awake 1138 01:08:32 --> 01:08:34 taking the exam. 1139 01:08:34 --> 01:08:39 Can't I get credit for the answers I was writing? 1140 01:08:39 --> 01:08:40 Yeah, it's here. 1141 01:08:40 --> 01:08:40 It's here. 1142 01:08:40 --> 01:08:42 Everybody's taking it here. 1143 01:08:42 --> 01:08:46 Look, do me a favor, do your best to put a seat between each 1144 01:08:46 --> 01:08:49 of you, and if you're not putting a seat between each of 1145 01:08:49 --> 01:08:52 you because we've run out -- because there are 300 of 1146 01:08:52 --> 01:08:54 you and not 600 seats. 1147 01:08:54 --> 01:09:00 It's considered good form not to take the exam like this, 1148 01:09:00 --> 01:09:02 particularly since the guy sitting next you is probably 1149 01:09:02 --> 01:09:05 just as clueless as you are. 1150 01:09:05 --> 01:09:11 It's really, really embarrassing when your wrong 1151 01:09:11 --> 01:09:13 answer is exactly the same as the wrong answer 1152 01:09:13 --> 01:09:15 sitting next to you. 1153 01:09:15 --> 01:09:19 I mean it's OK on a multiple choice thing, but this happened 1154 01:09:19 --> 01:09:21 -- actually, this happened to me once upon a time 1155 01:09:21 --> 01:09:23 in grade school. 1156 01:09:23 --> 01:09:27 I was accused of plagiarizing a report and they 1157 01:09:27 --> 01:09:30 showed it to me. 1158 01:09:30 --> 01:09:31 Here's this kid's report. 1159 01:09:31 --> 01:09:32 Here's your report. 1160 01:09:32 --> 01:09:34 These are identical. 1161 01:09:34 --> 01:09:36 Which was true. 1162 01:09:36 --> 01:09:40 And arrogant, smart kid that I was, I said, do you think 1163 01:09:40 --> 01:09:44 I'd plagiarize from him? 1164 01:09:44 --> 01:09:46 It didn't take much of a brain to figure out who'd plagiarize 1165 01:09:46 --> 01:09:50 from whom because this was a kid who was still reading the 1166 01:09:50 --> 01:09:52 books with the print that you could read across the room. 1167 01:09:52 --> 01:09:55 1168 01:09:55 --> 01:09:59 I wasn't going to plagiarize his -- I was sort of flattered 1169 01:09:59 --> 01:10:01 that he took my paper I guess. 1170 01:10:01 --> 01:10:04 Does anybody actually have a question I should answer here? 1171 01:10:04 --> 01:10:05 Yeah, all right. 1172 01:10:05 --> 01:10:07 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE PHRASE]? 1173 01:10:07 --> 01:10:08 PROFESSOR: Can I go over who? 1174 01:10:08 --> 01:10:10 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE PHRASE]. 1175 01:10:10 --> 01:10:11 PROFESSOR: The logic of perception. 1176 01:10:11 --> 01:10:17 Well, the logic of perception is Irvin Rock's jargon for what 1177 01:10:17 --> 01:10:20 I was really talking about in lecture, for instance, 1178 01:10:20 --> 01:10:23 as inference. 1179 01:10:23 --> 01:10:26 I think maybe in the book also is Helmoltz's idea 1180 01:10:26 --> 01:10:27 of unconscious inference. 1181 01:10:27 --> 01:10:32 It's this idea that you're continuously making the best 1182 01:10:32 --> 01:10:37 guess you can from an impoverished stimulus. 1183 01:10:37 --> 01:10:45 That you've got a set of rules built into that help you to try 1184 01:10:45 --> 01:10:50 to figure out what it is that you're looking at. 1185 01:10:50 --> 01:10:55 There's more to Rock's argument than that, but not much more 1186 01:10:55 --> 01:10:57 in the book, as I recall. 1187 01:10:57 --> 01:10:58 Something about like that. 1188 01:10:58 --> 01:11:01 There was another hand over there a moment ago. 1189 01:11:01 --> 01:11:02 Well, now there's one here. 1190 01:11:02 --> 01:11:03 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE PHRASE]? 1191 01:11:03 --> 01:11:08 1192 01:11:08 --> 01:11:10 PROFESSOR: Lectures or books. 1193 01:11:10 --> 01:11:13 This is the triage question. 1194 01:11:13 --> 01:11:15 I haven't read the book, I wasn't at the lectures, 1195 01:11:15 --> 01:11:19 now what do I do? 1196 01:11:19 --> 01:11:24 The answer is that the intersection of book and 1197 01:11:24 --> 01:11:28 lecture is the best place to devote your energy. 1198 01:11:28 --> 01:11:31 So things that were covered in both are probably important 1199 01:11:31 --> 01:11:33 enough that -- well, they're important enough that Gleitman 1200 01:11:33 --> 01:11:34 thought it was important and I thought it was important. 1201 01:11:34 --> 01:11:37 That sounds important. 1202 01:11:37 --> 01:11:45 Beyond that, I used to say that because I am as egocentric as 1203 01:11:45 --> 01:11:49 the next person, that things that are in my lectures but not 1204 01:11:49 --> 01:11:51 the book are more likely to show up than things that are in 1205 01:11:51 --> 01:11:53 the book but not in the lecture. 1206 01:11:53 --> 01:11:58 But I'm not really sure that's true anymore. 1207 01:11:58 --> 01:12:03 So I would say that after that, if I was trying to figure out 1208 01:12:03 --> 01:12:08 how to ration my precious time, I would look at the set of kind 1209 01:12:08 --> 01:12:12 of bullet questions that I put on most of the handouts, until 1210 01:12:12 --> 01:12:16 I ran out of time, for the chapter readings. 1211 01:12:16 --> 01:12:19 Because what you've got there is what I think is important 1212 01:12:19 --> 01:12:24 in the chapter, and that's a pretty good bet on things 1213 01:12:24 --> 01:12:27 that I might ask about. 1214 01:12:27 --> 01:12:32 I got no particular stake in being arbitrarily evil and 1215 01:12:32 --> 01:12:36 saying can I find some really teeny little piece of the book 1216 01:12:36 --> 01:12:41 that I can quiz you about and eh-ha, nobody got it. 1217 01:12:41 --> 01:12:44 The amusement of that wears off after the first 20 years of 1218 01:12:44 --> 01:12:47 teaching the course it turns out. 1219 01:12:47 --> 01:12:52 So, another way of looking at it is I tend to ask questions 1220 01:12:52 --> 01:12:55 -- when I'm going for stuff that's just in the book, I 1221 01:12:55 --> 01:12:58 tend to go for stuff that's covered in more than one 1222 01:12:58 --> 01:12:59 sentence in the book. 1223 01:12:59 --> 01:13:04 So if something is worth a page to Gleitman, you might as well 1224 01:13:04 --> 01:13:10 pay more attention to that than a passing figure caption. 1225 01:13:10 --> 01:13:12 All right, we'll take one more back there. 1226 01:13:12 --> 01:13:14 AUDIENCE: Is the exam an hour or an hour and a half? 1227 01:13:14 --> 01:13:14 PROFESSOR: Hour and a half. 1228 01:13:14 --> 01:13:17 1229 01:13:17 --> 01:13:20 You should know that it's no longer than it used to be 1230 01:13:20 --> 01:13:22 when it was an hour long. 1231 01:13:22 --> 01:13:23 So you'll be fine. 1232 01:13:23 --> 01:13:25 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE PHRASE]? 1233 01:13:25 --> 01:13:27 PROFESSOR: What genre of book is it based on? 1234 01:13:27 --> 01:13:28 Printed. 1235 01:13:28 --> 01:13:34 1236 01:13:34 --> 01:13:36 Good luck. 1237 01:13:36 --> 01:13:38