Editing 2567: Language Development
Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
The edit can be undone.
Please check the comparison below to verify that this is what you want to do, and then save the changes below to finish undoing the edit.
Latest revision | Your text | ||
Line 24: | Line 24: | ||
Perhaps this is an alternate universe where every baby has to gradually develop their language skills along a historical path rather than a child-developmental one, until they reach the ultimately developed modern language of their parents (in this case Modern English). | Perhaps this is an alternate universe where every baby has to gradually develop their language skills along a historical path rather than a child-developmental one, until they reach the ultimately developed modern language of their parents (in this case Modern English). | ||
β | There | + | There exists an apocryphal tale of an ancient (pre-Minoan) emperor, who was curious as to what the 'natural' language of humanity was. In the days before ethics review boards, he found it no problem to place a baby with a shepherd's family, ordering that no-one was to speak in the baby's earshot. The shepherd duly reported that the baby's babbling began to sound like 'bekos', the Phrygian word for bread, so the emperor deduced that Phrygian was the natural language. What he hadn't taken into account was the fact that while the adults were silent, the sheep were not, and the baby had begun imitating their bleating. |
In the title text, Randall describes a 2-year-old child as speaking in {{w|iambic pentameter}} and in Elizabethan English, a meter and dialect of modern English used by {{w|Shakespeare}} more than 400 years ago. The [https://www.verywellfamily.com/terrible-twos-and-your-toddler-2634394 Terrible Twos] are a colloquialism referring to the developmental tendency of two-year-olds to have more temperamental behavior, as the child's developing assertion of autonomy and self-identity clash with other expectations of behaviour, before hopefully acceptably balancing their assertiveness with social normatism. The toddler's quote of "forsooth, to bed thou shalt not take me, cur!" would roughly be equivalent to "Indeed, you shall not take me to bed, you dog!" in less archaic English. | In the title text, Randall describes a 2-year-old child as speaking in {{w|iambic pentameter}} and in Elizabethan English, a meter and dialect of modern English used by {{w|Shakespeare}} more than 400 years ago. The [https://www.verywellfamily.com/terrible-twos-and-your-toddler-2634394 Terrible Twos] are a colloquialism referring to the developmental tendency of two-year-olds to have more temperamental behavior, as the child's developing assertion of autonomy and self-identity clash with other expectations of behaviour, before hopefully acceptably balancing their assertiveness with social normatism. The toddler's quote of "forsooth, to bed thou shalt not take me, cur!" would roughly be equivalent to "Indeed, you shall not take me to bed, you dog!" in less archaic English. |