Language and lack of talking

[Tundra]

I hadn't realised this before. When I was talking with some people on another forum about that woman who was locked up in a basement for 20 years and had been impregnated 7 times by her father, language came up. Apparently the children are not very good at speaking German. (They're from Austria). The mother, who was 18 when she was imprisoned, had no access to books, but did have a tv. She apparently taught her children to read and write, and tried to have a sense of normalcy for them. But the kids often communicate with each other in grunts. I didn't understand why, because surely the mother would have talked to them, and she could have kept up her own vocabulary using the tv. But apparently it doesnt' work like that, especially since she would have had at least 9 months without anyone to talk to before the first baby was born. One of the members of that forum was saying that when she lost her voice for three months, she could feel her vocabulary getting smaller.

So I was wanting to discuss this phenomenon with you guys, for novel purposes. Because lots of us have got quests where small groups of people travel around for months or even years on end. I assume they would talk, but some of us have quests where it's a single person. Or what would happen to the baby in my quest story, with only four people to talk with? Why would children with only a mother to talk to have problems, rather than the usual scenario which is Mum and Dad? What would happen to say, people having to re populate the planet or something?

[Lord of Fools]

Look up feral children, if you're not too sensitive to horrifying tales of abuse, anyway. Weird as it may seem, it's probably not just being spoken to and educated in a language that helps one acquire it; I guess one might need other sorts of other sensory input to that part of the brain. I mean, these kids were locked up all their lives, and even with the tv it's unlikely they would have needed to use a lot of the words we find quite common, and therefore wouldn't have used them really.

It's also possible that, because they were all so close-knit, and in a small environment, it just didn't seem necessary to use language where grunts and sign-language would be just as well understood.

[Tundra]

I have been reading about feral children all day. The ones I didn't understand were ones where they *had* two parents, and *weren't* locked up in cages/beaten... yet they still couldn't talk. I don't know, maybe the parents just never tried to talk to them.

[snooze]

Is that the exception or the rule? I'm worried, now, 'cause I have a character who is highly antisocial but very verbose. Although I suppose she would communicate with colleagues at work and do a lot of her talking there.

[Tundra]

I don't know, Snooze. That's why I'm asking. It's a common thing in writing!

[Lord of Fools]

If the baby in the quest story doesn't receive enough stimulation outside of the group, maybe it would end up with a stunted vocabulary. If they stop around in villages or towns quite frequently- every few days- and its parents let strangers talk to it, and for it to play with strange things it finds, perhaps not. Still, language acquisition is tricky, and it's likely scientists who've studied this their whole lives wouldn't really know either- it's not as if they're allowed use controlled testing to develop these cases, and nor is it practical for them to use animals.

*is shuddering at thought of writing a baby into a quest*

[Tundra]

^ haha i know right, I do'nt know what I was thinking. :P Well they have this baby for about 6 months so hopefully it won't be too screwed up since there's 6 other questers.

[Lord of Fools]

I guess it depends on how old the child in question is.

[Tundra]

A few months old when they acquire it.

[Orion283]

I've pondered a scenario in which I'm stuck on a deserted island by myself kinda like in Cast Away, and like in the movie I'd probably start talking to myself just to remember how to talk. And (again like the movie) there's the worry that I'd start to think the imaginary friends I talk to are real.

[mcnicks]

Maybe it has something to do with having the right stimuli for speech to begin and to develop? My niece was very slow to start talking, and I often wondered if that was in part caused by having two parents and four grandparents doting on her all the time. She only had to point at something and everybody in the room would very quickly offer suggestions: "do you want a yoghurt?", "do you want to go to the back garden?", "do you want your rabbit?" She only really had to grunt her assent in order to get anything that she wanted. It was only when her needs started to become more complex, when she wanted to plan ahead and do something after something else occurred that she had to start expressing herself verbally. If you have no reason to plan ahead or desire to expand your horizons then maybe there would be less impetus to learn how to express yourself verbally?

On another note, I wonder whether environment has something to do with it as well. When you are out and about, you are exposed to thousands of sights, sounds and smells all the time. I cannot imagine that television would be any kind of alternative to that because television is most often focused on a single narrative in very discrete terms.

[cat_lover_4113]

^ I agree with what you say, mcnicks, about how with no reason to plan ahead, only focusing on the now, and what they had, which wouldn't change, that there was no use of expanding the vocabulary.

If there is nothing to change for, everything will stay the same.

[Malleus]

Syntax and the general use of language is picked up through childhood and especially in the first few years of life.

There's a woman named Genie who was locked up with absolutely no human contact for most of her life.

When she was admitted into care, she didn't speak at all, but she quickly began to pick it up, a lot like a child would. The language centres in the left hemisphere of the brain had never developed, so when she started learning, all the activity was in the right hemisphere. Possibly because of this, she never really developed particularly detailed syntax, so she never had the ability to use particularly complex grammar.

Anyhoo, the point I'm trying to make is that in a situation with no (or little) communication the ability to communicate wouldn't develop in the same way as in another situation. Perhaps the reason that the kids in this case are behaving in the way they are is because they could convey all the meaning that they needed to in their small community simply by grunting, so the other parts of the language centres of their brain didn't develop properly.

I'm no linguist though, I just did a semester of it last year, so I'm really just guessing.

[MichaelB]

I've pondered a scenario in which I'm stuck on a deserted island by myself kinda like in Cast Away, and like in the movie I'd probably start talking to myself just to remember how to talk. And (again like the movie) there's the worry that I'd start to think the imaginary friends I talk to are real.

I talk to myself all the time, because it helps me to keep my thoughts consitent and clear. Also, it freaks people out like woah. Especially if it's late at night and I'm trying to work out how a phrase would best be uttered in one of my languaged.

As for learning to not talk: Infants generally pick up language by listening and making context links. It's a pretty passive thing for the first year or so (or so I'm told), but there are certain circumstances where the baby might not be able to pick up words or contexts so easily.

I hold myself as an example. I was born with a hearing loss, which meant that, had I not recieved special early-intervention along with hearing aids, I might never have learned to speak at all. Because I got extra attention (more than the average baby, I would think) and because Mum was talking to me all the timeand specifically pointing out the context of certain words like 'dog' rather than expecting me to pick it up passively, I can now speak and write and make context-links and all the rest.

However! Without that initial contact, that first few years of constantly being talked to, or read to, I have no doubt I would be labelled by now as intellectually disabled. As we know I'm not, but what's one nonresponsive deaf-mute from another?

[MelancholyBliss]

I wouldn't say that's the exception. But I wouldn't say that's the norm. Meaning, it's not always going to happen that way but it's also not that rare, even when you consider non-feral children.

As others have suggested, part of it has to do with not having a need to communicate and develop verbally the way more social children would. Add that to the fact that the child's or children's parents did not actively try to correct or instruct proper speech. Imagine regular communication between a toddler learning to speak and his primary caregivers. Most children develop their own way of saying and interpreting things. All children mispronounce words or at a particularly young age, smush a series of long words down to a few seemingly incoherent syllables because it's easier to communicate that way. The caregivers who spend the most time with them can interpret their grunts, mumbles, mispronunciations and noises. Other people won't be able to. If this child never has a need to communicate beyond his or her small comfort zone and the parent never takes the time to break words and phrases down to teach proper pronunciation, the child is not going to develop the language tools to communicate effectively in social situations.

The child doesn't even need to be isolated from everyday social activity either. What matters most at this point are the primary caregivers. I know one particular girl who at 8 years old mumbled all the time. After seeing many specialists, it was determined that she had nothing that mentally impaired her ability to speak. Her parents admittedly did not take much time to speak to her or correct her speech at a young age. Even though she had other family, an older siblings who could speak and was around other people often, because her parents did not take the time to really talk to her and correct her speech, she never developed that ability well. I know another girl who was younger but at age 4 when most children can carry full conversations, also mumbled. She was raised by her grandmother and an aunt who had a severe disablility. Her caregiver was primarily focused taking care of an adult while that adult could not contribute to teaching or instructing the little girl when it came to speech. She also had parents, siblings and other people who were around her who didn't have much of an impact on how her speech developed. Neither could even be compared to feral children.