devin oesterle blog #2

In "The Language Instinct", Pinker uses the example of a young boy who is born without the ability to hear. He mentions that the boy, Simon, was not only born deaf, but he was born into a family with two deaf parents. Simon's parents', however, abilities to express themselves through ASL(American Sign Language) is not as fluent or understandable as one who is mute should be. Simon's ability to use ASL, on the other hand, is quite remarkable. The boy, only nine years of age, is far more advanced that the abilities of his mothers and fathers. "Simon must somehow have shut out his parents' ungrammatical 'noise.' He must have latched on to the inflections that his parents used inconsistently, and reinterpreted them as mandatory. And he must have seen the logic that was implicit, though never realized it, in his parent' use of two kinds of verb inflection, and reinvented the ASL system of superimposing both of them onto a single verb in a specific order." After reading this i asked myself this question: Is Steven Pinker really going to imply that this nine year old child mastered the use of ASL on his own with no outside help? Does he really think this is possible? I cannot distinguish between this mad man maybe, actually, believing this or just "blowing smoke" to try and create an uproar from opposing writers. I do know, however, that he is certainly succeeding in the second choice. A nine year old mastering the ASL, or any other language for that matter, without the guidance of an overseer or other form of an educated being is impossible. Claiming that this nine year old child could distinguish right or wrong in his parents' using of ASL without educated help is not only wrong, it is ridiculous! In conclusion, it is obvious that I strongly disagree with Steven Pinker when he implies that young Simon used his instincts to learn the correct use of ASL all by himself. I assure you that this is unobtainable, even by this "remarkable" young lad. Simon obviously had some kind of unknown, or untold, outside source to guide him in the right direction.