Subbash C. Bhatnagar 2007 Neuroscience for the Study of Communicative Disorders.
John P.J. Pinel with Maggie Edwards 2007 A Colorful Introduction to the Anatomy of the Human Brain.
This assumption led ...accept this belief in his Essay on the History of Civil Society, written in 1767. ” The earliest and latest accounts …represent mankind as assembled in troops and companies…[62]. Do not omit references and footnotes
“Man’ s use of language and articulate sound, like the shape and erect position of his body are to be considered as so many attributes of his nature: they are to be retained in his description, as the wing and the paw are in that of the eagle and the lion…”[63]
The exploration of man’s mind is not aided by the study of “a wild man caught in the woods, “ which would “teach us nothing important or new.,“ for the normal development of mental functions is dependent on society. The isolated individual would be defective just” as the anatomy of the eyes which had never received the impressions of light…would probably exhibit defects in the very structure…arising from their not being applied to their proper functions…”[64]. Apparently, Ferguson meant this not just as an analogy. Mental functions depend pm the body, “the temper of the heart and the intellectual operations of the mind, are in some measure, dependent on the state of the animal organs.”
Moreover:
“Society appears as old as the individual and the use of the tongue is as universal as that of the hand or the foot”[65].
Ferguson’s thinking demonstrates that the biological basis of language comes to occupy a central position, once the artificial barriers between mind and body, and man and society have been removed.
But for most thinkers in mid-eighteenth century, languages as a function of the mind was a problem for philosophical speculation. Although the natural and inherently biological basis of language has been mentioned, it played no role in the heated argument about the origin of language. The quarrel of whether man had invented language by application of his reason or whether it was God’s revelation could assume immense proportions without taking into consideration the biological basis of language. This was only possible because God and man’s reason were considered separated and above nature
[66].
The argument was resolved by Johann Gottfried Herder’s (1744-1803) essay on “The Origin of Language, ” written in 1770. Herder proposed that language was the product of man’s reason and a part of it, but that both language and reason were natural to man [67].
This quarrel and its resolution exemplifies another aspect of language theory. None of the major participants had based their theoretical arguments on work with language, just as most of the proponents of a natural or physiological basis of language had been heretofore satisfied to subordinate their viewpoint philosophically. The concern with language theory had been shared by philosophers, theologians, poets, scientists and thinkers.
This was to change drastically in the nineteenth century, when language theories were to come from men whose work was dedicated to the study of language. In the first part of the century these men were primarily philologists and their efforts were directed at the examination of a particular language as the expression of a particular culture. The biological basis of language received little attention from them. Nevertheless, Frank Bopp(1787-1932) the founder of Indogermanic philology and Rasmus Rask(1787-1932) a student of Icelandic, recognized language as “ a natural object, its study resembling natural history” [68].
The biological basis of language became of great interest to quite another group of men; the physicians. To the first among them, the interest in language was not only derived from his encounter with patients who had a language disturbance, but also from his own difficulties with the study of languages as a youth [69].
Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) whose importance for the development of neuro-anatomy and neurophysiology has recently been reviewed [70] wanted to put an end to the “highhanded generations if the philosophers” who had regarded the functions of the soul without consideration for their biological basis [71]. He thought “ to be on firm ground: to say that the language of words in terms of its cause, is not just a product of our faculties”[72]. The internal faculties presiding over language were represented in the brain by organs. (As Gall assumed for all” drives, technical abilities, affections, passions, moral and intellectual functions”).
Language was common to man and animals. The latter supposedly had sufficient words for their own needs [73], The two faculties for language were the memory of words, and the sense for spoken language. Man had the natural language of gestures and interjections. The language of words. Gall considered arbitrary invented signs. Words are not the basis of intelligence, they only aid in its development [74]. Gall’s postulation of two simple language centers could not do justice to the complexity of language.
Jean Baptiste Bouillaud (1796-1881) picked up Gall’s ideas in consideration with cases of aphasia, already in 1825. His thoughts on language were based on his clinical experience, and language was defined in terms of the difficulties his aphasic patients showed in the expressions or understanding of singles words [75]. Most of the subsequent work... on aphasia …in the 19th century. (P.458)
(c) Tolerance for variance; the mechanism of all changes. …(Separate by paragraph, not by page) ……munity because there would be no individual or not enough individuals whose latent structure is similarly deformed to allow them to resonate efficiently to such deviant behavior. On the other hand, it might be postulated that the deviation is due to a genetically transmitted trait, so that deviant children could resonate to their deviant parents. In fact, language deficient families do exist, although it is not yet certain that the mechanism is necessarily the one postulated here. However there is another reason why marked deviations of latent structure have a slow chance for dissemination.
The role of language is so important for social integration that such abnormally reduces the opportunity for finding a partner, and if the deviation is market enough, the individual will become virtually incommunicado with great probability of exclusion from the gene-pool. Furthermore, genetically based alternations of a given trait are likely to be accompanied by other deviations, and thus there is a greater proportion of multiply abnormal individuals among the group of people with latent structure alternations than among a random sample of the population. This is corroborated by the fact that children seen in clinics with complaints of severely defective language abilities have a greater incidence of associated abnormality than children admitted with infectious diseases. Such confluence of abnormalities in the latent structure deficient group raised the barriers to mixing in the general gene-pool and reduces the chances for perpetration of the trait. Thus, only small deviations from the norm are tolerated by the population owing to a potent process of selecting out the deviants. The variants is thereby continuously and actively kept small resulting automatically in a frequency distribution curve with steep slopes and a narrow base.
Compare this now to variations in actualization. Here, the latent structure or competence is not affected, and, therefore, resonance to this behavior is much more likely to occur, and social communication has a much lower risk of being seriously impaired. Thus, much greater variations in actualization and superficial or manifest structure are tolerated within the mechanisms of social cohesion. Deviations in performance may quite easily be compensated for (compare the congenitally deaf) so that all but the most extreme cases have a chance to integrate in the group and thus disseminate their idiosyncracies. This markedly greater degree of tolerance results in frequency distribution curves of deviations with much more gradual slops and a much wider bade than in the instances above. Superficial variance tends to be preserved in contrast to the variance in latent structure. A graphic representation of theoretical, cumulative frequency distribution of variation in latent structure and actualization or realized form is shown in Fig. 9.1 The norm is arbitrarily defined as consisting of all individuals above the 16th and below the 84th percentile; extreme deviants are defined as those individuals who fall below the sixth or above the 94th percentile, whereas the tolerated abnormal ones occupy the regions between. The graph shows how the two frequency distributions differ in terms of absolute variations encountered in the respective populations. As we look now at Fig. 9.1, the twice 10% of tolerable variations in the properties of the realized structure comprise a wider range of absolute variations of latent structure. That is, the raw material for potential change in the superficial structure of language is richer in tolerated absolute variations than the raw material on the level of underlying structure. Therefore, changes that may be brought about by selectioncontinue the paragraph
Scan and insert Fig.9.1. in appropriate place
FIG. 9.1. Cumulative frequency distribution of latent and superficial structure traits. (Assume that in every individual, traits are measurable in terms of a common, objective standards. ) Reasons as to why the frequency distribution of latent structure properties must have a much narrower base than those of superficial structure were given in the test. The graph shows that if tolerance levels for variation are the same for the two curves and both curves are normal, superficial structure has a wider range of tolerated variations (hatched) than latent structure (cross-hatched).
Biases are of a much narrower range for deeper than for superficial structure. In the history of the species, changes of underlying structure should, therefore, occur at a much slower rate than changes of superficial structure. To bring about a change of given magnitude by very small steps should take much longer than by large steps.
Here we have the core of our explanations: the deep and fundamental capacity for language can only be altered by very small steps, because there is not much variability to select from; the extreme deviants were eliminated before they could interact with the population and those that remain cannot be resonated to. The superficial structure of language can change rapidly and into many different directions because individuals are allowed to enter the group processes despite many kinds of deviations of varying magnitude; there variations can spread owing to the resonate phenomenon and thus within few generations cause enough change to account for historical shifts.
On the level of latent structure we are dealing with biological evolution and the biasing principle that gives direction to change is that of natural selection. Natural selection provides unidirectional biases. In the course of the evolutionary transformations that eventually led to our capacity for language, there have been no returns to or repetitions of prior stages.
The realized structure is affected by different biasing principles that act faster and cause changes with greater freedom of direction including, occasionally, a return to a prior stage or condition. The selective biases are of varying origin; most of them are due to capacities that are not related directly to man’s propensity for language. The deliberate additions to or deletions from the vocabulary, the degradations or elevations, narrowing or widening of particular meanings, the suppression of dialects, or glorification of vernaculars are purposeful alterations (that is, selections from the potentially available material). There are other changes that have nothing to do with purpose, and their motive forces may not be easily discernible. Nevertheless, they constitute selections out of a mass of potentially available variations which supply the material for change. Sound shift are a good example of this. The acoustic specifications of a group of speech sounds are altered, and this will sooner or later affect phonemic structure. All biological variations in anatomy of the vocal tract and articulatory motor coordination leave their effect upon the acoustics of an individual’s speech sounds. Since there is a great deal of tolerance for these variations they are allowed freely to enter the community and to affect other speakers, either through the phenomenon of response of the spreading of the… and Darlington) p. 387
This book attempts to reinstate the concept of the biological basis of language capacities and to make the specific assumptions so explicit that they may be subjected to empirical test. In many instances I have not been able to do more than to formulate questions and to show that they are not spurious. There is no research as yet that provides answers to them. But I hope that I have been able to show what type of investigations might lead to new insights and thus, perhaps, give new directions to old inquiries. A particularly promising approach seems to be the systematic evaluation of patients with various deficits, especially the deaf and the mentally retarded. Modern advances in technology and methodology in behavior research are likely to lead to new knowledge about language function, and thus the patients whose misfortune serves as source material for new studies may, hopefully, eventually profit from the new advances in our understanding of language.
This book must be understood as a discussion rather than a presentation of the biological foundations of language. The exact foundations are still largely unknown. On the other hand, I have considered this common claims relating to the biological nature of language. In those instances where I found myself to be in disagreement with widely held opinions, the argument may have taken on a predominantly iconoclastic character, as, for instance, in Chapter six; in other cases the topic seemed to me important enough to warrant a detailed discussion although the data do not lead to new ideas on the nature or origin of language, as, for example, the discussion of peripheral anatomy in Chapter two. However, both the negative and the positive contributions uniformly led me to quite a specific point of view, which I have attempted to summarize in Chapter nine, and which may, some day in the future, become the foundation to a new theory on language.
Separate by paragraph in stead of by page. Do you know why?
Even for the author of the “National History” …..The Theory of Language and Universal Grammar,” published in 1762 by Joseph Priestley (1733-1804). All social creatures have a God-given way of communication, and languages are like plants, which grow, blossom, and then wilt. The complexity of a language is never the result of design, but is due to accident and the structure of Man’s speech organs. Languages are subject to natural law, therefore one should not attempt to fix strict rules for its usage [58]. Do not omit the references and footnote!
The president of the Court of Dijon, Charles de Brosses (1709-1777), constructed a language theory in which reason played no basic role. Originally, language had been determined by the properties of the speech organs and by the nature of the objects to be named. Man’s speech organs can produce only certain sounds, and the nature of the objects compelled man to designate them with those sounds which depicted their properties. These sounds became names which could arouse the idea of the object in the mind [59]. De Brosses had directly applied the philosophical idea that names are physis to a language theory. He concluded that there must have been one organically developed language which all people possessed at some time but which is no longer spoken or known. For natural language was later elaborated by the intellect and utilized to fashion the various languages. The remnants of the original natural language inherent in all languages cannot be easily recognized because of all the multiple fortuitous changes to which languages have been subjected. In this process, the natural relationship between sound and meaning was lost, so that the languages we know are deteriorated languages. The original words and their true meanings can be rediscovered by Etymology [60] (a belief which had also been held by those Greeks who believed that language in physis).
De Brosses’ ideas have been considered the most typical expression of the spirit of the Enlightenment in the field of language theory. He had attributed language to a biological and a natural basis, but considered contemporary languages predominantly the product of man’s reason. The immediate contact with nature had been lost by the intervention of reason. For reason was not a part of nature, and primitive man, a barbarian, did not possess it.
This assumption led Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1788) and James Burnet, Lord Monboddo (1714-1799) to believe that man must have fashioned language for himself, after he had become an intelligent being, had formed societies, and developed his arts11. The implication was that man had not been originally a social being [61]. Adam Ferguson professor of moral philosophy in Edinburgh (1723-1816) could not accept this belief in his Essay on the History of Civil Society, written in 1767. ” The earliest and latest accounts …represent mankind as assembled in troops and companies… [62].
“Man’ s use of language and articulate sound, like the shape and erect position of his body are to be considered as so many attributes of his nature: they are to be retained in his description, as the wing and the paw are in that of the eagle and the lion…”[63]
The exploration of man’s mind is not aided by the study of “a wild man caught in the woods, “ which would “teach us nothing important or new.,“ for the normal development of mental functions is dependent on society. The isolated individual would be defective just” as the anatomy of the eyes which had never received the impressions of light…would probably exhibit defects in the very structure…arising from their not being applied to their proper functions…” [64]. Apparently, Ferguson meant this not just as an analogy. Mental functions depend pm the body, “the temper of the heart and the intellectual operations of the mind, are in some measure, dependent on the state of the animal organs.”
Moreover:
“Society appears as old as the individual and the use of the tongue is as universal as that of the hand or the foot” [65].
Ferguson’s thinking demonstrates that the biological basis of language comes to occupy a central position, once the artificial barriers between mind and body, and man and society have been removed.
But for most thinkers in mid-eighteenth century, language as a function of the mind was a problem for philosophical speculation. Although the natural and inherently biological basis of language has been mentioned, it played no role in the heated argument about the origin of language. The quarrel of whether man had invented language by application of his reason or whether it was God’s revelation could assume immense proportions without taking into consideration the biological basis of language. This was only possible because God and man’s reason were considered separated and above nature12 .
The argument was resolved by Johann Gottfried Herder’s (1744-1803) essay on “The Origin of Language,” written in 1770. Herder proposed that language was the product of man’s reason and a part of it, but that both language and reason were natural to man13 [67].
This quarrel and its resolution exemplifies another aspect of language theory. None of the major participants had based their theoretical arguments on work with language, just as most of the proponents of a natural or physiological basis of language had been heretofore satisfied to subordinate their viewpoint philosophically14. The concern with language theory had been shared by philosophers, theologians, poets, scientists and thinkers.
This was to change drastically in the nineteenth century, when language theories were to come from men whose work was dedicated to the study of language. In the first part of the century these men were primarily philologists and their efforts were directed at the examination of a particular language as the expression of a particular culture. The biological basis of language received little attention from them. Nevertheless, Frank Bopp (1787-1932) the founder of Indogermanic philology and Rasmus Rask (1787-1932) a student of Icelandic, recognized language as “a natural object, its study resembling natural history” [68].
The biological basis of language became of great interest to quite another group of men; the physicians. To the first among them, the interest in language was not only derived from his encounter with patients who had a language disturbance, but also from his own difficulties with the study of languages as a youth15 [69].
Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) whose importance for the development of neuro-anatomy and neurophysiology has recently been reviewed [70] wanted to put an end to the “highhanded generations if the philosophers” who had regarded the functions of the soul without consideration for their biological basis [71]. He thought “to be on firm ground: to say that the language of words in terms of its cause, is not just a product of our faculties” [72]. The internal faculties presiding over language were represented in the brain by organs. (As Gall assumed for all” drives, technical abilities, affections, passions, moral and intellectual functions”).
Language was common to man and animals. The latter supposedly had sufficient words for their own needs [73]. The two faculties for language were the memory of words, and the sense for spoken language. Man had the natural language of gestures and interjections. The language of words. Gall considered arbitrary invented signs. Words are not the basis of intelligence, they only aid in its development [74]. Gall’s postulation of two simple language centers could not do justice to the complexity of language.
Jean Baptiste Bouillaud (1796-1881) picked up Gall’s ideas in consideration with cases of aphasia, already in 1825. His thoughts on language were based on his clinical experience, and language was defined in terms of the difficulties his aphasic patients showed in the expressions or understanding of singles words [75].16 Most of the subsequent work on aphasia, including the famous papers of Paul Broca (1824-1880), published in the 1860’s, and the influential monograph by Carl Wernicke (1848-1905), published in 1874, were predominantly concerned with localization. Language was considered in the simple terms of the reception and emission of single words. This oversimplification undoubtedly contributed to the fact that linguists ignored the implications of the physicians’ findings for language science [76]. Earlier we pointed out that the linguists of the first half of the nineteenth century were philologists to whom the biological basis of language was not a central issue, a situation which had been foreseen by Wilhelm von Humboldt in the 1820’s. With him we shall now begin our detailed discussion of language scientists in the 19th century.
Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) had accepted and expanded Herder’s original viewpoint which had brought language from the sphere of philosophy into the realm of nature, by including reason in man’s natural endowment. Man can understand meaning attributed to sound, or the single word as a concept, only because language as a whole is innately in him. It is therefore inconceivable that language resulted from an accumulation of words. Language capacity is an attribute of intellectual man’s physiology. The changes which occur in languages with the passage of time, are part of historical development [77].
Language science will have to study both man’s language capacity and the history of languages. It will, have two aims, of which the inquiry into man’s language capacity is primary, and the exacting examination of particular language is secondary.
The biological nature of man’s language capacity appeared confirmed by the observation that all children acquire language at nearly the same age, although they may be raised under quite different circumstances. It is “characteristic for the unfolding of other biologically given attributes that a certain time is denoted for their development,” von Humboldt wrote [78].
No language can be understood in terms of a progressive accumulation of words which later becomes structured. Even the most primitive language requires an understanding of sentence structure [79]. Words cannot be equated with the well-defined symbols of mathematics, for they save more often to discover unverified truths than to define a truth which has been fully recognized [80]. Languages differ from each other in that each one has a distinctive facility to discover certain truths, so that every language represents a particular view of the world. The similarity of the language structures results from the fact that all languages are the expression of man’s inborn language capacity which should be the central point of all language studies. Yet “it is still too early to attempt an over-all theory of human speech…or even a general grammar” [81].
Humboldt’s discrimination between man’s language ability as a biological attribute, and the development of language in terms of language history was well taken. Many of the arguments about the origin and nature of language could have been avoided by adhering to a clear-cut separation of these two basic aspects. For Humboldt understood that they were but two integral components of language and that eventually languages would have to be considered in conjunction with man’s language capacity. But the work on languages had not yet progressed to a point where this was feasible.
Humboldt’s exposition of the aims of language science had not included a discussion of the appropriate methods. But by mid-century the question as to whether linguistics would belong to the natural or to the social sciences and this would determine its commitment to a methodology. August Schleicher (1821-1868), linguist and professor at Weimar and Jena, made a decision in favor of natural science. He believed that language had involved from animal sounds and that its development coincided with the development of the brain and the speech organs. The oldest components of language must have been the same everywhere, namely noises to signify percepts (Anschauungen). Schleicher postulated that the evolution of the human race had progressed through three phases: (1) The development of the physical organism in its most basic aspects. (2) The development of the language. (3) Human history. He thought that not all societies had reached this last phase. He was even convinced that the North American Indians had shown themselves unsuited for this phase and would not find a place in history, because of their overly complicated language.
Because language is man’s most outstanding characteristic, people should be classified according to their language which is a much more important attribute than their racial characteristics. Language being a “symptom” of cerebral activity, language differences must rest on some slight anatomical difference of the brain [82]. This direct connection between the characteristics of a language and the organ related to language ability was a rash conclusion. Had Schleicher adhered to Humboldt’s differentiation (of languages and language ability), his formulations might have proven more fruitful.
Very view linguists concurred with Schleicher’s thinking and his commitment to natural science. Friedrich Max Muller (1823-1900) favored the idea that linguistics was a natural science, for he had rejected Schleicher’s opinion that language evolved from natural sounds. This German born, Oxford professor of linguistics and literature popularized linguistics by his lectures and is still quoted today as an authority by nonlinguists. He considered language an irresistible exclusively human instinct. Known languages had developed out of word roots. These roots, the basic components of language, had originally been used in speech. They were composed of phonetic types, the product of a power inherent in human nature. He considered language and thought inseparable, “… to think is to speak low, to speak is to think aloud” [83].
The public acclaim which Muller received was not based on his erudition, and this irritated the linguists who recognized his fallacies. In 1892, William Dwight Whitney (1827-1894), professor at Yale, opposed Muller’s view on the identity of language and thought, and denied the possibility of a natural science of linguistics. Language was a social product based on a God-given energy. He feared that the inclusion of linguistics in the natural sciences would be used to deny free will which Whitney wanted to preserve at all costs [84].
The view that language was unique to man was not considered contradictory to evolution by Charles Darwin 91809-1882). “The faculty of articulated speech does not in itself offer any insuperable objection to the belief that man has been developed from some lower form” [85].For Darwin articulation, association of ideas, and the ability to connect definite ideas with definite sounds, were not unique characteristics of human language. Man differed from animals solely by his infinitely larger power of associating together the most diversified sounds and ideas. Originally, language had evolved out of man’s imitation of animal noises. Man had shard with the apes their strong tendency to imitate sound. Now, “man has an instinctive tendency to speak, as we see in the babble of our young children, whilst no child has an instinctive tendency to brew, bake or write. Moreover, no philologist no supposes that any language has been deliberately invented.” He found that “The intimate connection between the brain is well shown by these curious cases of brain disease in which speech is specially affected” [86].
The study of aphasia lead John Hughlings Jackson (1834-1911) to formulations on language which went beyond the simple conceptualizations of his predecessors. In his paper written in 1864, he differentiated between intellectual speech used for propositions, and oaths which, like other interjectional expression, are nonpropositional. Among the workers on aphasia, he was the first to emphasize that “language is not a wordheap” and that meaning is gained by placing words in context [87]. In order to understand the disturbances of language, it would be necessary to have a psychology and a physiology of language. Her drew on Herbert Spencer for his psychological formulations and proceeded to construct a very complicated hypothesis to explain the cerebral processes serving language function [88].
He formulated his findings, derived from the observation of cases of aphasia, in terms of cortical function. Learning language would have to be related to the establishment of sensory motor reflexes. For example:
“we learn the word ball, by hearing it and by the consequent articulatory adjustments… We learn the object ball, by receiving retinal impressions and by the occurrence of consequent ocular adjustment” [89].17
Jackson warned against confusing psychology with physiology and anatomy, but could not always avoid this confusion himself [90]. When he succeeded, it was often by the use of hypothetical construct. “Internal speech” may serve as an example of this. He had derived it from psychological introspection and attributed to it a physiological motor function of less intensity than uttered speech. An “idea” became physiologically speaking “a nervous process of a highly special movement of the articulatory series”… although Jackson had to admit that “ no actual movement occurs” [91] most of his theoretical elaborations were confined to a consideration of words or images, although he knew that language could not be understood or explained in terms of these elements! The interrelationships of words did not receive the attention which he knew they deserved.
Most physicians were content with the simple mechanistic explanations about single words, but Hughlings Jackson’s interest in a language psychology was shared by the most prominent linguist H. Steintal.18
Nearly fifty years after von Humboldt had formulated the aims of linguistics, Heymann Steinthal (1823-1899) undertook the task of providing the discipline with a scientific basis. With the advantage of having voluminous compendiums and detailed grammars at his disposal, Steinthal realized that language could only be fully understood, if it was regarded a part of mind. Its scientific study would have to be based on psychology. Only psychological description would permit the elucidation of man’s language capacity and the conditions under which it can develop. “Language appears of necessity… when mental development has reached a certain point.” It comes about after reflexive body movements had entered man’s consciousness, and after the association of perceptions with sounds.
（3）Certain specializations in peripheral anatomy and physiology account for some of the universal features of natural languages, but the description of these human peculiarities does not constitute an explanation for the phylogenetic development of language. During the evolutionary history of the species form function and behavior have interacted adaptively, but none of these aspects may be regarded as the ”cause” of the other. Today, mastery of language by an individual may be accomplished despite severe peripheral anomalies, indicating that cerebral function is now the determining factor for language behavior as we know it in contemporary man. This, however, does not necessarily reflect the evolutionary sequence of development events.
（4）The biological properties of the human form of cognition set strict limits to the range of possibilities for variations in natural languages. The forms and modes of categorization, the capacity for extracting similarities from physical stimulus configuration or from classes of deeper structural schemata, and the operating characteristics of the data-processing machinery of the brain (for example, time-limitations on the rate of input, resolution-power for the analysis of intertwined patterns such as nested dependencies, limits of storage capacities for data that must be processed simultaneously, etc.) are powerful factors that determine a peculiar type of form for language. Within the limits set, however, there are infinitely many variations possible. Thus the outer form of languages may vary with relatively great freedom, whereas the underlying type remains constant.
（5）The implication of（1）and（2）is that the existence of our cognitive processes entails a potential for language. It is a capacity for a communication system that must necessarily be of one specific type. This basic capacity develops ontogenetically in the course of physical maturation; however, certain environmental conditions also must be present to make it possible for language to unfold. Maturation brings cognitive processes to a state that we may call language-readiness. The organism now requires certain raw materials from which it can shape building blocks for his own language development. The situation is somewhat analogous to the relationship between nourishment and growth. The food that the growing individual takes in as architectural raw material must be chemically broken down and reconstituted before it may enter the synthesis that produces tissues and organs. The information on how the organs are to be structured does not come in the food but is latent in the individual’s own cellular components. The raw material for the individual’s language synthesis is the language synthesis is the language spoken by the adults surrounding the child. The presence of raw material seems to function like a releaser for the developmental language synthesizing process. The course of language-unfolding is quite strictly prescribed through the unique maturational path traversed by cognition, and thus we may say language-readiness is a state of latent language structure. The unfolding of language is a process of actualization in which latent structure is transformed into realized structure. The actualization of latent structure to realized structure is to give the underlying cognitively determined type a concrete form.*
* This formulation might be regarded …. (Do not omit footnote, p. 376)
（6）The actualization process is not the same as “beginning to say things.” In fact, it may be independent from certain restraints that are attending upon the capacity for making given responses. Actualization may take place even if responses are peripherally blocked; in this case actualization is demonstrable only through signs of understanding language. In cases where the proper raw material for language synthesis cannot be made available to the growing child（as in the deaf）,the latent structure fails to become actualized either temporarily or permanently.
（7）The maturation of cognitive processes comes about through progressive differentiation. Physiological（and, therefore, cognitive）functions assume characteristics and specificities much the way cells and tissues do during ontogeny. Organs do not suddenly begin to function out of a state of silence, but every function in the mature individual is a derivative of embryologically earlier types of function. Although the primitive functions may often be different from the mature ones, we cannot say just when a later or derived process had its beginning. If language is an aspect of a fundamental, biologically determined process, it is not scientifically profitable to look for a cause of language development in the growing child just as we do not look for a cause for the development of his ears. It might be more fruitful to think of maturation, including growth and the development of behavior such as language, as the traversing of highly unstable states; the disequilibrium of one leads to rearrangements that bring about new disequilibria, producing further rearrangements, and so on until relative stability, known as maturity, is reached. Language-readiness is an example of such a state of disequilibrium during which the mind creates a place into which the building blocks of language may fit.
（8）The disequilibrium state called language-readiness is of limited duration. It begins around two and declines with cerebral maturation in the early teens. At this time, apparently a steady state is reached, and cognitive processes are firmly structured, the capacity for primary language synthesis is lost, and cerebral reorganization of functions is no longer possible.
（9）The language potential and the latent structure may be assumed to be replicated in every healthy human being because they are consequence of human-specific cognitive processes and a human-specific course of maturation. In other words, universal grammar is of a unique type, common to all men, and it is entirely the by-product of peculiar modes of cognition based upon the biological constitution of individual. This notion of replication, which is a cornerstone of the present theory, also leads us to assume that the actualization process from latent to realized structure is universal because of replicated sequences of similar states of disequilibrium, and there is evidence for this assumption in the regularity of language-acquisition strategies discussed in Chapters Four and Seven.
（10）Because latent structure is replicated in every child and because all languages must have an inner form of identical type（although an infinity of variations is possible）, every child may learn any language with equal ease. The realized structure or outer form of the language that surrounds the growing child serves as mold upon which the form of child’s own realized structure is modeled. The maneuver is possible only because all languages are so constructed as to conform to the stringent requirements imposed upon them by cerebral language-data processing mechanisms. Insistence upon universal, underlying identity of type in all languages may be difficult to understand in the face of difference in rules of syntax and divergences. This puzzle is solved by considering the remarkable freedom allowed individual speakers to make creative and novel use of word-meanings, to reclassify words into various syntactic categories, and to take creative freedoms with rules of syntax. All aspects of outer form or realized structure are in a state of fluidity（of relatively high viscosity）indicating that it is our ”mode of calculating with categories” that is universal, but the categories themselves are not fixed nor the particular choice of the many possible operations.
（11）The raw material from which the individual synthesizes building blocks for his own language development cannot be the cause of the developing structure as evidenced by the autochthonous beginnings in the infant’s language acquisition. Primitive stages of language are simply too different from adult language to be regarded as a direct mirroring of the input. Nor is there any evidence that the adults surrounding the child are the causative or shaping agents that determine language onset or his course of development（see discussion of need as explanation in Chapter Four and of language teaching in Chapter Seven）. Purposiveness cannot, logically, be the mainspring for language development.
The study of language entered a new phase in the second century B.C. By this time the Greek language had changed so much that the old texts of Homeric times were no longer readily understandable. The task of their interpretation fell to the so-called critics or grammarians who had to evaluate and judge the beauty of the old manuscripts. Formal grammar owes its beginnings and development to their efforts in the succeeding two-hundred years [17].[1]
One group among the grammarians represented by the greatest Alexandrine philologist, Aristarch (220-142 B.C.) and his school, was convinced that the meaning or origin of many old words could be derived by postulating that they had been modified of declined similarly to words with which they were familiar. They therefore contended that language was ruled by analogy. This principle was supposed to rule nature (physis) and permit the establishment of natural laws. But because language had not yet acquired any degree of standardization, the claims of the analogists were not as solidly based as we might be led to suppose [18].
The analogists’ view was opposed by Krates, a philologist and grammarian, (came to Rome in 169 B.C.) and his school, who saw no law-fulness in language and, therefore, proclaimed its pervasion by anomaly (nomos). Anomaly was thought to be characteristic for everything made by man (nomos or thesis) [19]. Anomaly in language seemed to be confirmed by the observations which had already been made by Democritus (460-352 B.C.), that more than on name could apply to the same thing, that proper names could be changed and that analogy was frequently lacking. The standpoint of the anomalists was, in Steinthal’s opinion, the more solidly based in view of the paucity of grammatical rules. Yet at that time the argument could be used that language must be physis for otherwise neither blessing nor curse could have an effect [20].[2] But neither the principle of analogy or of anomaly could provide, by itself, the basis for the establishment of a formal grammar which, of necessity, would have to be based on rules but would have to make allowances for exceptions as well.
The establishment of a formal grammar became a pressing need in Roman times. Unlike their Greek predecessors, who had become preoccupied with language studies in their attempt to understand the classics, Roman men of letters required rules in order to write a Latin literature. Moreover, the standardization of Latin usage was of vital importance for the political aims of uniting the Roman Empire. The contribution of the Roman grammarians were primarily of a utilitarian nature and represent the application in practice of some Greek principles of thought. In the field of grammatical theory, Marcus Terentitus Varro (116-27 B.C.) resolved the antithesis of anomaly versus analogy by finding a place for both analogy and anomaly in grammar. For him language was a natural ability which gad been subjected to cultural development [21].
Lucretitus (91-51 B.C.) revived and elaborated the Epicurean ideas when he described language as a physiological function based on an inherent human need to name things [22]. With practical political and social goals as the impetus behind most of the extensive work on language done by the Romans—including the scholarly writings of Caesar and Cicero—the question of the biological basis or origin of language did not enter the discussion [23].
A very serious shortcoming of most Roman writers on language was the limitation of their discussions to Latin and Greek, which Steinthal regarded as the chief factor for their failure to formulate a more general language theory. In the writings of Gaius Plinius Secundus (23-79 A.D.) and of Strabo (63 B.C.-24 A.D.) only Greek and Latin are given serious consideration. One of the few to include other languages as well was the Epicurean Diogenes of Oinoanda (2nd century A.D.) who wrote that men created language everywhere quite naturally; it was not a conscious invention or the result of convention. No single man or god could have created it [24].
Summary: Greece and Rome (a table is missing here!)
Greece
Rome
[1] The Greek word gamma referred to the knowledge of language sounds and signs; a grammatikos was originally a schoolmaster who taught reading and writing. A differentiation between a Kritikos as literary critic and the Grammatikos or Grammarian was made only in Roman times. H. Steinthal, op. cit., pp. 375,436
[2] From the discussion it is clear that many of the arguments had arisen from the failure in defining the word language. First it had been used synonymously with naming, or it was referred to the Greek language. At other times, man’s specking capacity or the correct use of language were implied when language was discussed.
Physis (φύσις) is a Greek theological, philosophical, and scientific term usually translated into English as "nature". In the Odyssey, Homer uses the word once (its earliest known occurrence), referring to the intrinsic way of growth of a particular species of plant.[1] In other very early uses it had such a meaning: related to the natural growing of plants, animals, and other features of the world as they tend to develop without external influence. But in the pre-Socratic philosophers it developed a complex of other meanings.
Democritus (Greek: Δημόκριτος) was a pre-SocraticGreekmaterialistphilosopher (born at Abdera in Thrace ca. 460 BC - died ca 370 BC). Democritus was a student of Leucippus and co-originator of the belief that all matter is made up of various imperishable, indivisible elements which he called atoma (sg. atomon) or "indivisible units", from which we get the English word atom. It is virtually impossible to tell which of these ideas were unique to Democritus and which are attributable to Leucippus.
Hermann Steinthal (born at Gröbzig, Anhalt, May 16, 1823; died at BerlinMarch 14, 1899) was a German philologist and philosopher.
He studied philology and philosophy at the University of Berlin, and was in 1850 appointed privat-dozent of philology and mythology at that institution. He was a pupil of Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose Sprachwissenschaftliche Werke he edited in 1884. From 1852 to 1855 Steinthal resided in Paris, where he devoted himself to the study of Chinese, and in 1863 he was appointed assistant professor at the Berlin University; from 1872 he was also privat-dozent in critical history of the Old Testament and in religious philosophy at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums. In 1860 he founded, together with his brother-in-law Moritz Lazarus, the Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, in which was established the new science of racial psychology. Steinthal was one of the directors (from 1883) of the Deutsch-Israelitische Gemeindebund, and had charge of the department of religious instruction in various small congregations.
paucity少數;少量;缺乏 predecessors 前任;前輩 / (被取代的)原有事物 /【古】祖先 preoccupied全神貫注的;入神的[(+with)] / 被搶先佔有的 utilitarian a. 功利主義的 / 功利的;實利的 / n. 功利主義者;實利主義者 Marcus Terentitus Varro
antithesis 對立面;對立;對照;對偶 / (修辭學中的)對語,對句 Lucretitus
Epicurean
impetus 推動,促進;推動力;刺激[U][S1][(+to)][+to-v] / 衝力[U]
Caesar
Strabo was born in a wealthy family from Amaseia in Pontus (modern Amasya Turkey),[2] which had recently become part of the Roman Empire.[3] His mother was Georgian. He studied under various geographers and philosophers; first in Nysa, later in Rome. He was philosophically a Stoic and politically a proponent of Roman imperialism. Later he made extensive travels to Egypt and Kush, among others. It is not known when his Geography was written, though comments within the work itself place the finished version within the reign of Emperor Tiberius. Some place its first drafts around AD 7, others around 18. Last dateable mention is given to the death in 23 of Juba II, king of Maurousia (Mauretania), who is said to have died "just recently."[4] On the presumption that "recently" means within a year, Strabo stopped writing that year or the next (24 AD), perhaps because of his death.
Strabo's History is nearly completely lost. Although Strabo quotes it himself, and other classical authors mention that it existed, the only surviving document is a fragment of papyrus now in possession of the University of Milan (renumbered [Papyrus] 46).
Several different dates have been proposed for Strabo's death, but most of them place it shortly after 23.
Diogenes of Oenoanda (or Oinoanda) was an EpicureanGreek from the 2nd century AD who carved a summary of the philosophy of Epicurus onto a portico wall in the ancient city of Oenoanda in Lycia (modern day southwest Turkey). The surviving fragments of the wall, which originally extended about 80 meters, form an important source of Epicurean philosophy.
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