🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sep 10, 1:55 pm, "rs...@nycap.rr.com" <rs...@nycap.rr.com> wrote:
> On Sep 10, 12:56 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > On Sep 9, 8:22 pm, "rs...@nycap.rr.com" <rs...@nycap.rr.com> wrote:

> > > I speculate that the motor program generators that produce phonemes
> > > are centered in the parvicellular reticular nucleus (dorsolateral
> > > hindbrain) with vocalization in general. The circuitry is constructed
> > > by the genome. As the circuitry matures, the infant produces baby
> > > talk. I am told, by those who study such things, that all the phonemes
> > > that appear in adult language appear in baby talk. Is this not so? In
> > > any event, I speculate that there is no "learning" of baby talk; the
> > > neural circuitry just matures.
>
> > You're confusing "speech sound" with phoneme. Infants, it is said,
> > initially babble all the noises it's possible for a vocal tract to
> > make, but in a very short time they home in on just the particular
> > speech sounds heard in their environment. Eventually, as they acquire
> > their first langauge(s), they organize the speech sounds into the
> > sound system of their native language(s), and that sound system is
> > made up of its phonemes.
>
> Confused? I don't think so. The infant babbles not all the noises,
> etc., but only that small subset that the genome has expressed itself
> in the circuitry of motor program generators. I choose to call the
> motor acts of babbling phonemes. That is my choice. This is a free
> country.

Are you saying that the only noises occurring in babies' babbling are
the noises that can physically be produced by a vocal tract because
the vocal tract is endowed with its properties by the genome? That
would seem to be a very roundabout way of saying what I said.

You may "choose" to use a technical term in linguistics your very own
private way, but if you do, no one will understand you.

(It's also a technical term in speech synthesis, with a very different
meaning, again not remotely like yours.)

> The experience of hearing language produces a most complicated set of
> strengthened synapses, weakened synapses, formation of new synapses,
> and sloughing of old synapses. This corpus together with our own
> speech acts produces a difference signal. The genome has programmed
> the nervous system to reduce this difference. We tend to reproduce the
> dialect of our village.

Again, a very roundabout way of saying that over the course of a few
months, an infant acquires its native language(s).

> The details of  "reduce this difference" lie in the future of
> neuroscience. In some decade, or century, a grad student will work it
> out. I have confidence. The accumulation of the above corpus is a
> lifetime process. When we first hear "stand on line" rather than
> "stand in line", or "try and" rather than "try to", we are so
> conscious or our nervous system making adjustments.

No, we usually are not. Most such dialectal differences simply wash
over us unnoticed, yielding no interference in communication.

> > Language is more than sounds. Language is "duality of
> > patterning" (whereby a limited set of meaningless things -- phonemes
> > -- combine into an indefinitely large set of meaningful things --
> >  morphemes -- that combine into communicative utterances.
>
> Some people hear one soul (mind, homunculus, executive function)
> attempting to communicate with another. That is an entirely different
> story, and lies outside neuroscience. At least I judge it so.

And has nothing to do with the structure of human language.

> If you are interested in the nervous system, you might look at:http://home.nycap.rr.com/rscanlon/brain/brain.htm
> For a conjecture on how the nervous system might work.

Not particularly, thank you.