Judy talks about the four instincts that bring us to language. The first is rhythm. ‘The single gesture doesn’t have rhythm. But you bring a whole bunch of gesturers together, and they repeat, and you create an environment in which communication has the kind of rhythmicity that draws instinct.’ The second, she says, is ‘monkey see, monkey do’, which is about aping someone. In fact she admits that the term is totally wrong, because monkeys don’t ape, but primates do, so it should really be ‘ape see, ape do’, but that doesn’t sound nearly as good. Number three is the language instinct: we are born with these expectations for what a language is and what a language should be like. And number four she calls peer pressure – the fact that the very young child thinks that what they believe to be the grammar of the language is what everyone believes. They get to be corrected. They become like the people around them.
So does sign language, which, after all, is as proper a language as any other, have the same critical period for learning as spoken language? Normally up until puberty any language can be learned with ease, but after that it’s a much harder task.
‘If you’re beyond the critical period,’ says Judy, ‘I can expose you to language until the cows come home, and you’re not going to acquire it the way that a native speaker would.’ If you’re before the critical period for language, she adds, the beauty is, all you need is the compulsion to copy and to be like others.
Such are the expectations of what language is that what is in effect a series of gestures can become a language. So the young children in that first generation in Nicaragua, who came into an environment with older children who were just gesturing, using a whole mish-mash of communication, not language, were fooled into thinking that the gestures were a language; then their expectations kicked in and actually turned it into a full-blown language. The heart of it is language always comes from our expectations about what language should be. Most of the time our expectations come to fit in with the expectations of the adults around us. In the Nicaraguan case the language instinct created a whole new sign language.
It’s tempting to liken the pre-signing children to pre-language homo sapiens thousands of years ago. Was the moment when a group of Nicaraguan children began to form their own sign language similar to a time long ago when a family group of early humans – perhaps sitting round a fire at night – began to share stories with each other using signs which followed an agreed pattern? Judy Kegl is excited by the idea.
‘You know, we can look back and we can theorize how language came into being, but we can’t really go back and see it happening. This is a case where we were actually able to sit there during the time that a language was coming into being, and look at it, and see the process while that was happening.’
And so to the big question: has Judy’s experience in Nicaragua tilted her one way or another in the schism, or maybe one should just say controversy, that has bedeviled linguists since Chomsky: the idea of a linguistic hard-wiring rather than language being something we acquire?
She is unequivocal: ‘If you have children you’ve had the experience. You watch your children learn English. If you really watch them, they’re learning at a much more rapid pace and they’re doing a lot more with it than you ever could teach them individually. So in Nicaragua there was no English around. There was no Spanish around. There was no sign language. It’s going to be very hard to convince me that something as complex and rich as any other human language didn’t come out of the human brain. But I’m also convinced that language needs a trigger.’
The trigger, whether thousands of years ago sitting round a fire or coming together for the first time at a school in Nicaragua, she believes, is community.
‘Eskimos Have a Hundred Words for Snow’
Every culture, whether it be a community of deaf mutes or the Eskimos (using that word as a collective noun for all the indigenous peoples of the Arctic region), develop their own way of describing the world around them. For the most part this is done through language. So does our language alter the way we think?
Urban myths are fascinating things, a mixture of Chinese whispers and a desire to astound and astonish one’s friends. One old chestnut is the belief that Eskimos have hundreds of words for snow. It is, of course, untrue, but strip away the exaggeration and you’ll find the kernel of a linguistic debate which has exercised minds for centuries. Does the language we speak control how we think? Does the (erroneous) fact that a group of people have multiple words for snow mean that they view snow differently from, say, English-speakers?
Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Emperor, declared that ‘to have a second language is to have a second soul’. We talk about a nation’s language reflecting their temperament and therefore being more suited for certain subjects: French, flowery and romantic for love; English, practical for trade; and German, logical for science. (Wittgenstein said he was once asked whether Germans think in the order they speak in or think normally first and then mix it up afterwards.) Frederick the Great of Prussia had a more specific set of hypotheses: ‘I speak French to my ambassadors, English to my accountants, Italian to my mistress, Latin to my God and German to my horse.’
There is, inevitably, a linguistic theory attached to the debate and, like so many theories surrounding language, this one is unprovable. It’s also fiendishly complicated, full of those impenetrable words that academics bandy around, and it’s got a name: the Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis. Sounds like something out of Star Trek, doesn’t it? The hypothesis was developed by two anthropologists – Edmund Sapir and Benjamin Whorf – who conducted extensive research among the native people of North America in the early and mid twentieth century. Whorf concluded that language ‘is not merely a reproducing instrument for voicing ideas, but is itself the shaper of ideas … We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages.’
It was an article by Whorf published in 1940 that prompted the Eskimo words-for-snow myth. What Whorf actually said was that the Eskimos, or to be precise the Inuit people (Yupik and Aleut are also spoken by the various Eskimo tribes) have seven distinct words for snow and must therefore think differently about snow. The initial data was flawed and then extravagantly misinterpreted. In the popular press the seven became fifty, and by 1984 an editorial in the New York Times expanded the number to 100. The misinterpretation lies in the grammatical structure of the Inuit, Yupik and Aleut languages. They are ‘agglutinated’ languages (from the Latin meaning ‘to glue together’), where suffixes can be added on to a root word to make a new meaning. It’s a kind of synthetic process whereby new words are formed by adding morphemes (linguistic units) together. The number of words are almost limitless, as you can just keep piling on the adjectives to form a new word from the root. So for instance the root word for snow is kamiktshaq, and you can add tluk, meaning ‘bad’, to create a new word, kamiktshaqtluk. In theory you could add ‘pee’ and ‘walrus’ to form a new word which would be the equivalent of ‘badsnowpeedonbywalrus’. We do the same sort of thing in English when we add -(e)s to words to make plurals, and in compound words such as shamelessness or, in an extreme case, antidistestablishmentarianism, but normally we make phrases rather than very long words. In fact, English and Eskimo have about the same number of root words for snow – think: snow, blizzard, sleet, slush, hail, flurry.
Here’s another example. The Pinupti Australian Aboriginals have a word katarta, which is the hole left by a goanna when it has broken the surface of its burrow after hibernation. That’s a lot of words in English to translate one Pinupti word. It’s not in our vocabulary because we don’t have goannas and we don’t live as closely with nature as the Pinupti. If we did, we’d undoubtedly have invented a word. Likewise, if, like the Inuit, our way of life, our very survival, were determined by snow, we might very well come up with different terms (like a word for the ‘wrong sort of snow’ which falls on roads and runways and railtracks and brings Britain to a standstill for a week).
Messers Sapir and Whorf also noted that th
e North American Hopi tribe have two separate words for water – one for water in a container and another for water in an open space – like a pond or a river. Does that infer they have a different way of perceiving water? Hardly. But in English we use the same word for water in a river, water in the sea, water in a glass. A Hopi might be justifiably curious why we English-speakers don’t have more distinct words for the stuff.
Perception of colour throws up some interesting conundrums, too. For instance, Russian has more individual words for the different shades of blue than English, so does that mean Russians think differently when looking at a Chagall painting than British people do? The Japanese used to use the word ao, which spans both green and blue. When the first traffic lights were introduced into the country in the 1930s the green-coloured go light was called ao shingoo. Over the years popular use of ao changed to represent mostly blue shades, and midori became the popular word for green … which made things a bit difficult for the traffic light. So what did the Japanese do? Instead of changing the official name to midori, in 1973 they changed all the go lights to a blue-green colour – still within the definitions of green to satisfy the international traffic codes, but blue enough to fit the word ao. Definitely a case of language changing reality.
Studies on bilinguals have tried to find out if their view of the world is different, depending on which language they use. Russian-English bilinguals were asked to explain how the world works. When they spoke in Russian they expressed much more collectivist ideas and when they spoke English they spouted more individualistic values. Another study of Japanese women living in the United States asked them to complete sentences in Japanese and then in English, The first sentence was ‘When my wishes conflict with my family’s …’ The Japanese response was ‘it is a time of great unhappiness’. The English was ‘I do what I want’. Another sentence, ‘Real friends should …’ was completed in Japanese with ‘help each other’. In English it was ‘be very frank’.
Languages around the world reflect different understandings of time and space. For example, in English, we use prepositions to express our idea of the past ‘behind’ us and the future ‘ahead’. But some Aboriginal tribes use compass points rather than prepositions to describe both place and time. So time for them moves east to west, not forwards or backwards.
Professor Lera Boroditsky is a psycholinguist at California’s Stanford University. She explains that in many languages there are words like left and right that are used to divide up space. ‘In English we tend to divide our space relative to our bodies,’ she says. ‘If I turn through 180 degrees, the chair that was on my left is now on my right. In some languages words like left and right aren’t used at all, and instead everything is expressed in some kind of geographical system. Sometimes it’s north, south, east, west; sometimes it’s relative to a hill that you live on, or a river that runs through your land. So everything will be up river, down river or across the river. In order to speak a language like that you have to stay oriented with respect to the landscape. You have to be able to say things like there’s an ant on your south-west leg, but if you turn 180 degrees then it will be your north-east leg. So it’s not on your body, it’s really on the landscape.’
But does all this mean that it’s the language which is shaping thought and perception, determining the way we perceive the world, or is it merely pragmatic? After all, it makes sense for a nomadic people to orientate themselves to their environment through compass points because they travel huge distances using landmarks. So what we do is shape our language to our environment – a bit like putting on a suit of clothes which we can adapt depending on the weather, occasion, environment, mood. You can tie yourself in knots over this debate – as many have done.
The question is, has the language developed the way it has because the culture has demanded that of the language? It’s very hard to know which is the chicken and which is the egg. Here’s Professor Boroditsky on the subject. ‘Chicken and egg isn’t the right way to think about it, because humans develop languages as tools for communicating and also as tools for thinking. And we develop the tools that we need, that we want, that we desire in our environment, to achieve the goals that we have. But then the tools that we create also give us cognitive abilities and allow us to do more. That’s why we created them. And so the next generation of speakers really benefits from having those tools built into the language. And these forces mutually influence and reinforce each other.’
What is clear is that languages have always been evolving, often at remarkable speed, and when you look at where our own language, English, came from, you can see just how far it has travelled. And for that historical perspective we have to thank the detective work of two remarkable brothers.
Fairy Tales and PIE
The two brothers were both German professors, and their research into the relationship between similar words of different languages was an important contribution to the study of how language develops. But we know them better as story collectors, the purveyors of tales of wicked stepmothers and frog princes and sleeping princesses that permeate all of our childhoods. They were, of course, the Brothers Grimm.
The tale of this inseparable pair is a compelling one. Two brothers, just a year apart in age, who lived, studied and wrote together for almost their entire lives. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were born in the German town of Hanau, near Frankfurt, towards the end of the eighteenth century. They were the oldest surviving sons in a family of nine children – eight boys and one girl, three of whom died in infancy. Their father Philip was a lawyer and court official, and their early childhood seems to have been happy. Then, when Jacob was eleven, their father died. The family was forced to move from the countryside into a cramped townhouse, and the two boys were sent away to a school in the north. Jacob and Wilhelm went on to study law at university but after their mother died they both took positions as librarians to support their younger brothers and sister.
Both young men were passionate about German folklore and set out on a mission to preserve Germany’s oral tradition and investigate how words change their sounds over time. As part of their research they collected fairy and folk tales from friends and guests, who often recounted stories told to them by their servants; from local peasants and villagers; and from published works from other languages and cultures. The story of Red Riding Hood is thought to have been recounted by Dortchen, a pharmacist’s daughter and childhood friend whom Wilhelm later married.
They published their first collection of eighty-six German fairy stories, Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Tales of Children and the Home), in 1812. The volume included such classics as ‘Cinderella’, ‘Snow White’, ‘Hansel and Gretel’ and ‘The Frog Prince’. The brothers clearly didn’t intend the tales to be read by children or non-scholars. The first edition had a long introduction, reams of notes and no illustrations, and the stories themselves were certainly not child-friendly. These were earthy tales, full of cruelty and hunger and loss, of witches and trolls and ravaging wolves prowling through dark forests. Mothers, not just stepmothers, were evil; a wicked queen was forced to dance in red-hot shoes until she died; a servant was put into a nail-studded barrel and a witch baked alive; children were abducted by a pipe-playing rat catcher; even the Frog King was thrown against a wall to wake him up instead of being kissed. Not Walt Disney, then.
Wilhelm Carl Grimm and Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm, noted for their work in linguistics as well as their famous fairy tales
The brothers’ different personalities complemented each other. Bachelor Jacob – introverted, physically stronger – was the more academic of the two. He did much of the research for the folklore and the bulk of the work on the theories of language and grammar. Wilhelm was warmer, less physically strong – he had asthma and a weak heart – and he was more interested in literature; he edited and constantly revised the stories to give them their classic narrative style. The brothers continued to collect and publish hundreds of German fairy tales and legends – with limited
financial rewards. Fortunately for them, Europe was experiencing a flowering of children’s literature, and illustrated books of folk tales like ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ were already hugely popular in England. Eventually, after the success of the first English translation of the Grimms’ collection in 1823 (German Popular Stories, illustrated by George Cruickshank), the brothers selected fifty of their most popular tales, refined and softened many of them and republished the cheaper Kleine Ausgabe (Small Edition) in 1925. Their younger brother, Ludwig, illustrated it.
The Grimms’ Fairy Tales, as the English-language version was called, were soon established as classic children’s literature. The collection of tales became the most reprinted book in Germany after Luther’s bible and has been translated into more than 160 languages. And what would Walt Disney, who kick-started his movie empire with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, have done without the Brothers Grimm?
As the brothers collected their folk tales they were able to investigate phonetic shifts in the German language which led them to formulate one of the earliest and most important linguistic laws, now known as Grimm’s Law. It was largely Jacob Grimm’s work. He traced the vowel shifts in various European and Ayran languages and found they were all linked to a common root. His work on linguistics, contained in the original German grammar book, Deutsche Grammatik, in 1819, was the first to employ a rigorous scientific methodology and could be said to have given linguistics – or philology as the Germans like to call it – a sound basis.
In 1838, the brothers began a monumental project: the Deutsche Wörterbuch (or simply Der Grimm) is to the German language what the Oxford English Dictionary is to English. The brothers planned to record information about the history and usage of every German word. They thought the task would take them ten years; in fact, Wilhelm had died by the time the first volume, A–Biermolke, was published, and when Jacob died in 1864, he was only at F for Frucht (fruit). An army of academics continued work on the dictionary, but it wasn’t completed until 1961 – almost a century and thirty-two volumes later. It has around 350,000 entries and weighs 84 kilos. The dictionary is already being revised, and letters A–F are due for completion in 2012.
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