Born to communicate
The astonishing rise of a new language in 500 deaf children gives us insights into
the gift of language in our first parents.
by Kevin May
Images from stockxpert and stock.xchng
Language—its use is the most important thing that sets humans apart from other
mammals. We are able to express all kinds of ideas and feelings besides talking
about material objects, and can discuss hypothetical matters as well as realities
past, present and future.
People have experimented with certain animals and birds, teaching them to respond
to certain words. For example, chimpanzees have been taught to use sign language
expressing a limited range of concepts. But no animal has ever displayed language
ability coming anywhere close to that of their teachers.1 We are truly ‘wondrously made’.
Language is part of being human
Language is an essential part of human existence. It makes us unique in the animal
kingdom. How then did humans acquire language?
Is it a learned ability, made possible by evolutionary development from primitive
hoots and grunts, or an innate and essential part of being human? Philosophers and
linguists have debated this question for ages, especially since Charles Darwin popularized
the theory of evolution.
No animal has ever displayed language ability coming anywhere close to that of their
teachers. We are truly ‘wondrously made’.
Many experts, unwilling to contemplate the existence of a creator, have sought to
explain the development and use of language by naturalistic means. So they tell
us that as man evolved he developed a vocal tract of the right shape to produce
various speech sounds, and that as his brain became bigger he developed the ability
to control and use his vocal tract for communication. Initially, we are told, he
used grunts and hoots to express himself, and over a long period he refined these
into what we today call spoken language.
The famous 20th century linguist Noam Chomsky (not a creationist) tried
to find an explanation for language. He concluded, taking a stand against many of
his contemporaries, that human language ability is innate.2 Today we have more evidence to back up this claim.3
Children readily learn language
We are so uncomfortable about the word ‘die’ that we use other, less
stark expressions for it, like ‘pass away’, or ‘go to heaven’.
Watching a young child learning to talk is fascinating. At first a child can’t
say anything. But after months of hearing his parents and others talking around
him and to him, he begins to say words that are intelligible. For a time he will
babble, making sounds without meaning as he explores the possibilities of what he
can do. Words begin to come one at a time (typically ‘Mum’, ‘Dad’,
‘car’ etc.), then in basic clauses (like ‘want drink’),
and then in sentences. No matter how complex is the grammar of the mother tongue,
the child learns it and uses it. By about age five he knows all the significant
grammatical patterns, even though his vocabulary is quite small. Vocab grows by
leaps and bounds after that, so that by the time he is a teenager he is learning
new words at a fantastic rate. This ability to pick up language is itself evidence
of an innate drive to communicate. But there’s more.
When children grow up in an environment of deafness, the inner compulsion to communicate
can be seen more clearly, because it can be done even without spoken words. If the
child is deaf, and the parents use sign language, the child quickly learns to express
himself in sign language too. If the parents are deaf, the child will learn just
the same; and if his own hearing is intact, he will also learn to speak fluently
and naturally through his contact with other people. In effect he becomes bilingual,
because sign language is a true language with recognizable grammatical and syntactic4 structure, only using hand
gestures and facial expressions instead of sounds. So the desire and ability to
communicate via language is there, with or without actual speech ability.5
The deaf children of Nicaragua
A particularly striking example of this is to be seen in the experience of some
deaf children in Nicaragua, reported by Peter Radetsky.6 Around 500 such children came together for the first
time in schools for the deaf, established in 1980. Until that time they had had
no established form of sign language. They had been living in scattered parts of
the country, communicating with hearing relatives by gestures. Yet each child’s
set of gestures had little in common with another’s.
But when they came together in the schools, they quickly developed a form of sign
language between themselves. At first it was rudimentary, but before long it became
a regular language with characteristic rules of grammar and syntax. Judy Kegl, a
behavioural neuroscientist at Rutgers, described it as ‘the first documented
case of the birth of a language.’ She continued, ‘Little kids about
the age of three or four got exposed to that makeshift pidgin and absorbed it. And
then, by virtue of their own language-generation capability, they came out with
a full-fledged language.’ This sign language had no precedent. In our own
culture, sign language has been handed down from one generation to another, but
these children had no such background. Their language was entirely of their own
making. ‘There is nothing that they could have used as a model’, says
Kegl. ‘It’s clear evidence of an innate language capacity.’7
Adam had language from the very beginning
The first humans, Adam and Eve, had the ability to communicate with each other (and
God) from the outset, using language. This includes the mental ability (and desire)
to communicate, the physical means to produce speech sounds, the ability to hear
them, and the mental ability to process the sounds and connect them with the concepts
they represent. Since they had no experience of many of the words that God used,
much of their vocabulary may have been preprogrammed, rather than acquired.
When God first created Adam He said several things to him such as, ‘You may
eat freely the fruit from any tree in the garden, but you shall not eat the fruit
of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that you eat of it you
shall surely die.’
Unless Adam had been given some prior understanding of the meaning of the words,
and the grammatical patterns in which they were used, God’s communication
to him would not have worked.
But Adam had not yet seen a creature die, because death only began when Adam sinned
(Romans 5:12). What then would he have understood by the
word ‘die’? We today are all too familiar with the meaning of ‘die’,
because we see death around us frequently. We are so uncomfortable about it that
we use other, less stark expressions for it, like ‘pass away’, or ‘go
to heaven’.
Before Eve was created, Adam found no partner suitable for himself among all the
animals. They couldn’t talk to him!
The text gives us no hint that Adam did not comprehend it. Even if he did not understand
its full significance and horror, he must have known that it was a bad thing. God
could have explained it as he talked with Adam in the garden. But we must conclude
that he knew the meaning of the word that God used even before he had experienced
what it signified.8
Language was an important part of the reason why we read in Genesis 2:20 that, before Eve was created, Adam found no
partner suitable for himself among all the animals. They couldn’t talk to
him! Adam needed a partner who could communicate fully with him, as well as being
one with whom he could raise a family. So God gave him Eve, and he recognised that
she was just right for him (Genesis 2:23). God knew what was best for Adam, and gave
it to him freely—just as He does today for all who depend on Him.
Brain size doesn’t determine ability
Noted linguist William Foley claims that language developed when brain size in the
evolving humans took an upward leap.1 As brains grew larger, their complexity
of neural connections became very much greater and language became possible.
But really it is not brain size that matters, but how that brain is organized.
Brain size in humans ranges widely, typically somewhere between 1040 ml and 1595
ml.2 Even though brain size tends to correlate with body size, it would
be simplistic and false to say that a large person with a 1500 ml brain should be
nearly twice as intelligent as a pygmy with a 900 ml brain!
People of all body sizes have potentially the same mental abilities, simply because
they are human. It’s true that some have a higher IQ than others. That’s
part of the ordinary variability between individuals. But IQ does not correlate
with the physical size of the brain.3
References
- Foley, W., Anthropological Linguistics: An Introduction, Blackwell Publishers,
Oxford, UK, p. 60, 1997.
- 90% range. Extremes for normal humans approx. 900–2,000 ml. See Lubenow, M.,
Bones of Contention, BakerBooks, Michigan, USA, p. 138, 1992.
- Eg. Skoyles, J.R. and Sagan, D., Up from dragons: The evolution of human intelligence,
McGraw–Hill, New York, p. 239, 2002, refers to a woman with a brain size of
760 ml and a normal IQ.
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References and notes
- For example, recursiveness—concepts within concepts,
e.g. ‘I told you to read this article’. A child can understand; no chimp
ever could, regardless of the sign vocabulary used. A child can also put himself
into another’s mind. See <creation.com/monkeying>. Return
to text.
- Chomsky is famous for developing the method of analysis of
grammatical patterns known as ‘transformational grammar’, which was
based particularly on the patterns of English. It has not always been fruitful in
the field for analyzing other languages. But it seems he got the innateness of language
right. Return to text.
- See Sarfati, J., Refuting Evolution 2, chap. 12, Master Books, Arkansas,
USA, 2004. Return to text.
- Syntax = the patterns by which words are formed into phrases
and sentences in a given language. Return to text.
- Sign language in deaf people uses the same areas of the brain
as hearing people do for spoken language. Return to text.
- Radetsky, P., Silence, signs and wonder, Discover
magazine, 15(8):60–68, August 1994. Return
to text.
- Quoted by Radetsky, ref. 6. Return to text.
- After all, Adam knew what ‘not’ meant, although
he hadn’t experienced a ‘not’—cf. Sarfati, J., Refuting Compromise, Master Books, Arkansas, USA,
p. 223, 2004. Return to text.
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