[lbo-talk] Toward some better thoughts

[Chris Doss]

"Produc[ing] all the possible sounds of all human languages" is the same thing as "randomly making noises with the human voice box," like "producing all the possible sounds of a piano concerto" is (or can be) the same thing as "randomly beating on a piano keyboard." Does she explain how this develops into languages, for instance, do the gurglings take on a different character depending on whatever linguistic environment the baby is raised in?

--- On Thu, 7/23/09, Chuck Grimes <cgrimes at rawbw.com> wrote:


> From: Chuck Grimes <cgrimes at rawbw.com>
> Subject: [lbo-talk] Toward some better thoughts
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Thursday, July 23, 2009, 12:13 AM
> In an effort to find something sweet
> in the world, here is something:
> 
> ``The beginning of speech is found in babbling of babies.
> At about
> five months children start to make their first speech
> sounds. Researchers say that when babies babble, they
> produce all the
> possible sounds of all human languages, randomly generating
> phonemes
> from Japanese to English to Swahili...'' (Kenneally, 142p)
>