Which came first: Words or Syllables?

Back when this blog was starting out Ireported on a paper given by Judy Kegl (nowJudy Shepard-Kegl) at a conference in South Africa. Kegl is an expert on sign language and had observed a new sign language emerge at a school for the deaf in Nicaragua. She listed four innate qualities that lead to language: (1) love of rhythm or prosody, (2) a taste for mirroring (imitation), (3) an appetite for linguistic competence, and (4) the wish to be like one ’s peers. I found this an interesting and plausible list and have wondered why I don’t see more references to it. Rereading that old post has made the silence more comprehensible. It is entirely human and childish and has nothing to do with computation, or syntax, or conditioning.The scene it brings to my mind is of a playground during class recess. The kids are lined up playing jump rope, chanting their rhymes as the rope twirls. Dashing in, making their leaps and dashing off. It is non-serious, but recognizably human. Other animals rough-house and tumble together but they do not form rhythmic play groups. We are too pompous to look to playgrounds for information about our own natures.I was reminded of that old post when I read a paper byWendy Sandler, “What comes first in language emergence?” which is included in a volume entitledDependencies in Language. She offers the following provocative sentence:The pattern of emergence we see [in sign languages] suggests that the central properties of language that are considered uni...
Source: Babel's Dawn - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Source Type: blogs