Creativity

Press the right key for the next slide (or swipe left)

also ...

Press the left key to go backwards (or swipe right)

Press n to toggle whether notes are shown (no equivalent if you don't have a keyboard)

Press m or double tap to see a menu of slides

I'm assuming that Davidson is right that anyone who can think communicate with language.

recap

Assumption:

If someone can communicate with language, she can think.

Consequence:

Acquiring language cannot involve thinking at the outset.

Question:

How could someone begin to acquire words without being able to think?

Answer:

By being trained to utter a particular word in response to certain simulations!

Observation:

There is a gap between what training achieves (use) and what language acquisition requires (understanding).

Now:

How do children actually acquire language?

homesigns

Try to imagine you have never communicated linguistically with anyone. You realise that other people interact much more easily that you can. You're sitting here and everyone else is concentrating or making notes and obviously getting something out of being here that you aren't. But what? What is it that they are doing and how are they doing it?

Some deaf children in North America are brought up in purely oral environments without any sign language and therefore don't experience language at all. These children invent their own sign languages, which are called homesigns. Their invented languages are not as rich as those of children who experience other people's languages, but they have many of the same features (Goldin-Meadow 2002, 2003). These deaf children have somehow worked out for themselves what linguistic communication is and they have found a way of doing it. They have invented languages with no prior experience of language, and they have invented languages in a modality that people around them barely use in linguistic communication. These linguistically isolated deaf children have answered in practice the questions that these lectures are about.

What are their languages like? Here are some examples ...

“Pointing at the Present to Refer to the Non-Present. David points at the chair at the head of the dining room table in his home and then produces a “sleep” gesture to tell us that his father (who typically sits in that chair) is asleep in another room. He is pointing at one object to mean another and, in this way, manages to use a gesture that is grounded in the present to refer to someone who is not in the room at all” (Goldin-Meadow 2003: 74, figure 1)

Goldin-Meadow (2003, figure 1)

“Examples of Conventional Emblems Whose Meanings Are Not as Transparent as They Seem. In panel A, David is shown producing a “break” gesture. Although this gesture looks like it should be used only to describe snapping long thin objects into two pieces with the hands, all of the children used the gesture to refer to objects of a variety of sizes and shapes, many of which had not been broken by the hands. In panel B, Marvin is shown producing a “give” gesture. This gesture looks like it should mean “put something small in my hand,” but all of the children used it to request the transfer of an object, big or small, to a place that was not necessarily the child's hand. Thus, many of the gestures that the deaf children used were not as transparent in meaning as a quick glance would suggest” (Goldin-Meadow 2003: 76, figure 2).

Goldin-Meadow (2003, figure 2)

Goldin-Meadow (2003, figure 11)

“David is holding a toy and uses it to point at a tray of snacks that his mother is carrying = snack (the tray is not shown in the drawing). Without dropping the toy, he jabs it several times at his mouth = eat. Finally, he points with the toy at me sprawled on the floor in front of him (not shown) = Susan” (Goldin-Meadow 2003: 110, figure 1).

“With this long string of gestures, all produced before she relaxed her hands, Qing is indicating that swordfish can poke a person (proposition 1) so that the person becomes dead (proposition 2), that they have long, straight noses (proposition 3), and that they swim (proposition 4)” (Goldin-Meadow 2003: 170).

In more detail: “Complex Gesture Sentences. Qing [Chinese child] produces five distinct gestures that she combines into a single complex gesture sentence (that is, she produces the string of gestures without breaking her flow of movement). The five gestures are illustrated in this figure: Qing points at a picture of a swordfish (= swordfish). She jabs at her own chest as though piercing her heart (= poke-in-chest). She crooks her index finger and holds it in the air (this is an emblem in Taiwan that hearing speakers use to mean dead). She holds her index finger on her nose and extends it outward (= long-straight-nose). She wiggles her palm back and forth (= swim).” (Goldin-Meadow 2003: 171, figure 22)

Goldin-Meadow (2003, figure 22)

Can we say something about the general features of homesigns?

Gesture forms are:

stable

'gesture forms do not change capriciously with changing situations'

i. ‘The gestures are stable in form, although they needn’t be. It would be easy for the children to make up a new gesture to fit every new situation (and, indeed, that appears to be what hearing speakers do when they gesture along with their speech, cf. McNeill, 1992). But that’s not what the deaf children do. They develop a stable store of forms which they use in a range of situations-they develop a lexicon, an essential component of all languages (Goldin-Meadow, Butcher, Mylander, & Dodge, 1994).’ \citep[p.\ 1389]{Goldin-Meadow:2002dq}

arbitrary

'gesture--meaning pairs have arbitrary aspects within an iconic framework'

systematic

'the gestures the children develop are composed of parts that form paradigms, or systems of contrasts. When the children invent a gesture form, they do so with two goals in mind-the form must not only capture the meaning they intend (a gesture-world relation), but it must also contrast in a systematic way with other forms in their repertoire (a gesture-gesture relation).' \citep[p.\ 1389]{Goldin-Meadow:2002dq}

Gesture forms are used:

with different forces (to ask questions, make comments, request things, ...)
to talk about past, future and hypothetical things
to tell stories
to communicate with oneself
to talk about gestures (metalanguage)

Goldin-Meadow 2002

Children can create their own first languages.

I haven't explained the evidence for this claim here, but children in ordinary linguistic environments are also extremely creative from the beginning of their attempts to communicate.

What children do with words is, from the very beginning, purposively directed at sharing with others conscious attention to objects and events in their environment.

This means that there's no prospect at all of describing characteristically human antics without mentioning psychological notions like purpose, understanding, consciousness and attention.

The basic features of our mental lives can't be factored out of discussions by waffle about “forms of life” or “social practices” or “deontic scorekeeping”.

Children can create their own first languages.

How does this bear on our position? Recall ...

recap

Assumption:

If someone can communicate with language, she can think.

Consequence:

Acquiring language cannot involve thinking at the outset.

Question:

How could someone begin to acquire create words without being able to think?

Answer:

By being trained to utter a particular word in response to certain simulations!

Observation:

There is a gap between what training achieves (use) and what language acquisition requires (understanding).

Now:

How do children actually acquire language?

So here's my challenge to Davidson and others who hold that anyone can communicate with language can think:

explain how someone could begin to create words without already being able to think.

As I've been explaining, the challenge arises because children who have no language and no significant experience of language can create languages of their own.

So we have to reject this answer.

For my part, I think it's probably time to drop the assumption.

Not because we've shown it's wrong, but because there's no good argument for it an a significant obstactle to accepting it.

So let's return to our overall question without that assumption.

(Recall that the question was, How do humans first come to communicate with words?)

This is an aside. Take a break, don't listen. But things are worse for Davidson and others than you imagine.

aside

Recall Davidson's argument.

If someone can think, she must be capable of having a false belief.
To be capable of having a false belief it is necessary to understand the possibility of false belief.
Understanding the possibility of false belief entails being able to communicate by language.

Conclusion:

If someone can think, she can communicate with language.

‘Intentional action cannot emerge before belief and desire, for an intentional action is one explained by beliefs and desires that caused it.’

Davidson 1999, p. 10

\citep[p.\ 10]{Davidson:1999ju}

So Davidson's view is that intentional action is impossible without language.

I think it's right to link intentional action to intention, and intention to thought.

So I think Davidson is right to this extent: if anyone who can think can communicate with language, then anyone who can act intentionally can communicate with language.

This underlines the difficulty of meeting that challange, of explaining how language creation gets going.

If Davidson is right, it must get going without either thinking or acting intentionally.