Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
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From: pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)
Subject: Re: What's innate? (Was Re: Artificial Neural Networks and Cognition
Message-ID: <D38qGn.H6L@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>
Organization: UTCC Public Access
References: <1995Jan26.224354.401@news.media.mit.edu> <1995Jan27.013805.5038@news.media.mit.edu> <D333tu.7qv@hpl.hp.com> <1995Jan28.042255.15324@news.media.mit.edu>
Date: Mon, 30 Jan 1995 22:57:59 GMT
Lines: 74

In article <1995Jan28.042255.15324@news.media.mit.edu>,
Marvin Minsky <minsky@media.mit.edu> wrote:
:
>A couple of days ago Andrzej Pindor proposed himself as a
>counterexample, and I was gonna reply soon:-----
>
>From: pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)
>Subject: Re: What's innate? 
>Date: Thu, 26 Jan 1995 18:41:56 GMT
>
>>Marvin Minsky has a whole section in 'The Society of Mind" about it
>>and it is one of very few things in his book with which I strongly
>>disagree.
>
>>My disagreement come from observing my children and myself. It is true
>>that I speak English with a thick accent, but this definitely does not
>>come from the fact (as claimed by MM), that (at puberty) I have lost
>>some structures in my brain which made it possible for me to
>>distingush various accents and produce them. I can very well
>>distinguish different English accents and can  even mimic them quite
>>well for short periods of time, if I concentrate on it.
>
>Answer 1.  There could be exceptions.  They are not common.
>Answer 2.  It does not apply well to people who learned two or more
>languages early in life.  This is presumably because of two
>linguistic 'facts':
>
>a. There are only (I'm told) around 150 phonemes in all popular languages.
>b. A typical language has around 75.
>
>So if, as a child, you learned to distinguish the phonemes of three
>languages, then you *can* hearn--and accordingly, learn to use--learn
>almost all the phonemes they need.  And, hah, hah, on the remaining
>ones, the chances are that the English speakers (who know only about 0.7
>languages each) can't discern the remaining differences.
>
>So Andrzej, this suggests that you came from a bi- or tri- lingual
>environment.  Refutable?
>
Actually no, I come from a uni-lingual environment. I started getting first
exposure to foreign languages at about 10, but it was it was a rather low
intensity exposure - say twice week for one hour. You can hardly call
this an environment.
What I was trying to point out in my posting was an alternative explanation
why adults have so much difficulty picking up a correct foreign language
pronunciation and accent as compared to children. The explanation is based on
the observation that children pay attention to different aspect of language
than adults. Children concentrate on the form - how things are said, more
then on what is being said, contrary to the adults for whom the content is
more important than the form. Children learn language, and anything else,
first of all by copying what they see or hear, without a regard if this means
anything to them or not, adults want to know first of all what it means,
they have a need to correlate it to things they know. When adults learn
a foreign language, first thing they do is to try to translate foreign phrases
into the language they know.

Andrzej

>-m
>
>Another chance to use my favorite sig.
>
>    ___________________________________________
>  "Don't pay any attention to the critics. Don't even ignore them."
>                                            ---------  Sam Goldwyn
>.
>


-- 
Andrzej Pindor                        The foolish reject what they see and 
University of Toronto                 not what they think; the wise reject
Instructional and Research Computing  what they think and not what they see.
pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca                           Huang Po
