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The content explores the nature of language, its acquisition in humans from infancy, and the surprising linguistic capabilities observed in other species, particularly the bonobo Kanzi, challenging the notion that language is uniquely human.
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Baby Kanzi was recently adopted and adjusting to life in his new home. His mother was working
with a language coach to learn some English, and Kanzi usually came along, though he didn't
appear to pay much attention. But the language coach noticed that he seemed to be picking up
on how to communicate just by watching his mother's lessons. Oddly enough, it appeared
that he was picking things up faster than his mom. For example, the phrases, "You tickle"
and "tickle you" meant two different things. And Kanzi's mom, she was having a hard time
understanding that syntax. One day, Kanzi was hanging out, playing with stuffed animals, and
the coach asked him to make the dog bite the snake. Kanzi put the snake into the dog's mouth
like it was no big deal. It was a really big deal, because Kanzi is a bonobo. He's actually a
language superstar. Even among the elite research primates, like Koko the gorilla, Kanzi
was the first ape to demonstrate that language can be acquired spontaneously through
observation, without planned training, and the first to show a rudimentary understanding of
grammar, syntax, and semantics. Again, really big deal! Especially because for years, humans
have been proclaiming that it's language that sets us apart from other animals. But are we
really alone? Turns out, that question keeps getting more and more complicated.
Technically, we define language as a set of spoken, written, or signed words, and the way
we combine them to communicate meaning. If we change that definition to include the use
of complex grammar, then maybe we are alone.
But if language is simply the ability to communicate
through a meaningful sequence of symbols, as I might
do while looking for a bathroom in Sweden, or Kanzi
does when she's asking for roast marshmallows, well then welcome to the club, apes!
[INTRO MUSIC]
We communicate in part by engaging our brains and bodies to make sounds that let us transfer
thoughts from our brain to other people's brains. But of course, language is more than just making
air vibrate with sound. I can communicate by moving my hands, which you might have noticed
I do pretty frequently, or by using visual symbols.
All of these forms of language allow us to
comprehend things we've never actually witnessed, and exchange information with each other quickly
and effectively to, y'know, get a job, or be a friend,
or use a metaphor. It's hard to imagine a fulfilling
life without some kind of language. Humans have nearly 7,000 different languages and
no matter how different they sound, we can break down their basic structure in the same
way, using the same three building blocks. The smallest of them are phonemes.
These are very short, distinctive sound units like "a," "t," "ch," "sh," like, stuff like that.
English uses about 40 of them. Phonemes go together to make morphemes, which are
the smallest units that carry meaning. This can be words or parts of words, like a prefix
or a suffix for example. The word "speech" is a morpheme that contains four phoneme
sound units: "s," "p," "ee," "ch." From there, you arrange morphemes into your language's
grammar or system of rules, allowing you to say the things that you want to say.
So those 40 English phonemes give us over 100,000 morphemes that produce the more
than 616,000 words in the Oxford English Dictionary, which can be arranged into an
infinite number of sentences, paragraphs, Wu-Tang lyrics, or Shakespearean plays.
And just as the structure of language starts small, so does how we learn language.
And we start very young. The word "infant" comes from the Latin "in fans," meaning
"not speaking." But as early as four months, they can recognize differences in speech
and start to read lips, matching mouth movements
with their corresponding sounds like, "ah," "e," "i," "o."
And even at this age, you got to watch what you say about kids in their presence, because this
also marks the beginning of receptive language, or the ability to understand what's being said,
both to and about us. Soon, that receptive language
blooms to accommodate productive language,
when instead of just understanding other people, babies start developing the ability to produce
words. Of course, that takes a while, but in the meantime, they get a lot of practice babbling.
Beginning at about four months, they start to make all sorts of sounds. Although you may get
a "dada" or a "mama," babbling is not an imitation
of adult speech. In fact, it typically includes sounds
from many different languages, and a stranger
couldn't tell if a kid was Italian or Kenyan or Korean
just by the sound of her babbling. Similarly, deaf babies will watch their parents signing and start
babbling with their hands by about 10 months. That babbling morphs into something that starts
to make sense, and "mama" probably really means "mama" now. Without exposure to other languages,
a child will actually lose the ability to both hear
and create particular tones and sounds that
aren't part of his or her household language. So someone who speaks English around the
house soon won't be able to differentiate between certain phonemes in Mandarin
if they heard them, for instance, or between aspirated and non-aspirated consonants
in Hindi. By the time they're mowing down the first birthday cake, most kids will be
entering the one-word stage of language development. They now know that sounds
carry specific meanings, and connect the sound "dog" to that furry thing across
the room. By around 18 months, their capacity for learning new words jumps from about
one a week to one a day, and by the time they're
two they're probably speaking in two-word statements.
These choppy sentences are kind of like a telegraphic speech -- they sound like clumsy
texts or old-school telegrams, using mostly nouns and verbs. "Want juice," "No pants,"
that kind of stuff. These little sentences make sense and they follow the rules of
their language's syntax. For example, an English-speaking child would put an
adjective before a noun: "Black cat" while a Spanish speaker would reverse that: "gato negro."
From there, the average kid is soon uttering longer phrases in complete sentences --
refusing to put pants on and demanding more crackers. Most humans hit these same milestones
during their language development, but there are competing theories about how our infant babbles
turn into complex sentences and how we acquire language. You'll remember B.F. Skinner, the
pioneering behaviorist who brought us learning through reinforcement. He believed language
was a product of associative principles and operant conditioning. Skinner argued that a kid
learned to associate words with meanings largely through reinforcement. So in the Skinner model,
for example, if baby Bruno says "mmmm" and his mother
gives him some milk, he'll find that outcome
(both the milk and the attention) rewarding, and eventually, work his way up to saying, "milk,"
through these learned associations and shaping processes. It's good to be understood, right?
But as usual, not everyone was on board with Skinner. In particular, legendary American
linguist Noam Chomsky argued that a kid like Bruno would never reach his full, complex,
sonnet-writing potential if his learning was dependent on conditioning alone. Chonsky
instead proposed the idea of innate learning and ubiquitous grammatical categories,
pointing out that while the world's thousands of languages may sound wildly diverse, they're
actually very similar, sharing some basic elements. He called this "universal grammar."
Chomsky's universal grammar posited that all human languages contain nouns, verbs,
and adjectives, and humans are born with an innate ability to acquire language, and
even a genetic predisposition to learn grammatical rules, rather than being
linguistic blank slates. Chomsky suggested that we're hardwired for it from day one.
In the end though, we're still not sure how we acquire language; however, developmental
research and studies of other species have given us a sense that at least some of it is
innate, while the role of learning and exposure is also important. So if it's true that all humans
have some innate capacity for language, where in
the brain is it sitting? We've talked a lot about how
function is localized in the brain, and that is definitely
true for some aspects of language, but while speaking,
reading, writing, and even singing all fall under the language umbrella, their locations in the
brain are a little more complicated. Consider aphasia, a neurological impairment of language.
People can experience lots of different kinds of aphasia, depending on whether they've suffered
an injury, or stroke, or a tumor, or dementia. So maybe they can speak but not read,
maybe they can sing but barely speak, or write but not read. The region of the brain known
as Broca's Area and the left frontal lobe is involved with the production of speech.
If i suffered a trauma to this area, I might still comprehend speech but struggled to speak,
although I might still be able to sing, because that's conducted elsewhere in the brain.
On the other hand, that falling coconut struck another region called the Vernicas Area, a region
in the left temporal lobe involved in the expression and comprehension of language,
I'd still be able to speak, but my language wouldn't make any sense, so you might find
me saying something like, "it was two pizza i called purple brother on the television."
Aphasia and other brain injuries remind us how thinking and language are both separate
and intricately entwined. For instance, it's hard to say if non-verbal ideas come to us first and
we think of the words to name them, or if instead, our thoughts are born in language. Or if we'd be
able to even think without it. And because language
often helps to frame your ideas, your thinking might
actually be influenced by which language you're using. So what are the implications
of this? If we expand the definition of language
to include other species, how might Kanzi's ability
to communicate that he wants a marshmallow affect his thinking, and how might that thinking
influence his language progression and his identity?
If only i had the words to describe how fascinating
this all is. If you understood the language I was using
today, you learned how languages are built from
phonemes, morphemes, and grammar; and when children acquire receptive and productive language
and pass through the babbling one-word and two-word phases of development. You also
learned some theories on how we acquire language, what brain areas are involved, and
how thinking and language are connected. Thanks for watching, especially to all of
our Subbable subscribers. If you'd like to sponsor an episode of Crash Course, or
even be animated into an upcoming episode, just go to subbable.com/crashcourse.
This episode was written by Kathleen Yale, edited by Blake de Pastino, and our consultant
is Dr. Ranjit Bhagwat. Our director and editor is Nicholas Jenkins, the script supervisor is
Michael Aranda who is also our sound designer, and the graphics team is Thought Café.
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