Is Rory speaking Japanese?
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I recently posted that my grandson has started watching videos in Japanese. Now it appears that he may be speaking it - or is he just mimicking the sounds?
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@Steve-Miller said in Is Rory speaking Japanese?:
Now it appears that he may be speaking it - or is he just mimicking the sounds?
Neither. The part that starts after 30 seconds, he's not speaking Japanese, but he's also making sounds that don't exist in the Japanese phonetic inventory. And in terms of prosody (rhythm, intonation), the quality of his utterance (the total stretch of sounds that starts around that point) does not have a "Japanese feel" to it.
That doesn't mean he won't start speaking Japanese at some point, and it doesn't rule out the possibility that the sounds he's making have some internal consistency.
But it's not Japanese.
This is not surprising though, since every thing I've read about childhood language acquisition, especially first language acquisition, says that children don't -- can't -- learn a language without human interaction. And interaction is inherently interactive. When he's watching anime videos, it's not interactive.
Now, given that he's neurodivergent (if I'm remembering right), his language development may be different, and again, he might start picking up Japanese phrases and using them in the future.
However, the likelihood of that would be much greater if he had someone to speak Japanese with, rather than just the one-way input of tv shows.
Nevertheless, it's really, really interesting that he's so drawn to Japanese.
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Bit of a sidebar:
Maybe @ShiroKuro can comment on the info in the article...I don't know how accurate it is....but I find it fascinating that there seems to be a drive to develop language in our efforts to communicate...
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I need to look more closely at that, @wtg But just from a quick scan, one problem with the article is that some of the cases they mention (like abuse cases like Genie) are not “children in isolation” but “one child in isolation and abuse,” and besides the fact that language needs to be learned in the context of communication with others, the brain damage that children experience from abuse can negatively impact language development. So these cases are not really good for considering whether children (plural) can develop their own language.
I think it seems very likely that children could develop their own language but then it wild take multiple generations for linguistic development to flesh out.
I’ll see if I can find an article about the sign language that was developed by deaf children in Nicaragua. That’s a perhaps little more relevant case.
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@ShiroKuro - Thanks for the article. The Nicaragua case is mentioned in the article I posted, but the Atlas Obscura article has more detail.
Fascinating.
When the world wearies and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden - Minnie AumĂ´nier
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@wtg whoops, I obviously didn’t read to the end! But I’m glad they got to that point. Interaction is always the key, and that’s why I decided to focus on sociolinguistics rather than other subdisciplines of linguistics.
But the way, I like that that article you linked ended with the stuff about songbirds:
Even in songbirds, it appears that learning from an adult is often a necessary step in developing the ability to vocalize and communicate. Baby male Zebra Finches deprived of an adult “tutor” will still learn to sing, but not the in same way as their peers (In case you’re wondering, just listening to a recording doesn’t work as well. Yes, scientists have tested this.) Like many songbirds, male Zebra Finches utilize their singing skills in order to attract a mate. If they don’t get the chance to learn from an older mentor, their resulting sub-par singing skills may even mean they are less likely to attract the attention of the lady Zebra Finches. Interestingly however, one study found that when isolated Zebra Finches were allowed to raise young of their own, successive generations gradually altered the song. Within 4 or 5 generations, the descendants of these isolated birds were producing songs very similar to those of their wild counterparts.
I have always thought this was a fascinating discovery and sort of knocks human exceptionalism down a few rungs. (Insert critical comment about Chomsky here).
Also, the part I bolded aligns so clearly with findings from human first language acquisition. And this is another reason why all the hype around using AI in educational roles really bugs me.
