Learning from infants' first verbs.
Learning from infants' first verbs.
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从婴儿的第一个动词中学习。
DOI：
10.1111/j.1540-5834.2009.00527.x
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发表时间：
2009
影响因子：
9.5
通讯作者：
Waxman,SandraR
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Waxman,SandraR
几个世纪以来，人们一直对婴儿的第一句话着迷。这种迷恋并不是幼儿父母、发展心理学家或心理语言学家的特殊特征。相反，这种迷恋是普遍的，婴儿的第一句话可以作为激烈讨论的切入点，话题范围广泛，从先天知识，智力的本质，和民族性格的发展。由于希腊历史学家希罗多德的著作，我们可以追溯到对婴儿的第一句话的迷恋，在公元前世纪，埃及法老Psammetichus统治的时代。根据传说，Psammetichus坚信埃及人是世界上最古老的民族，但这遭到了弗里吉亚人的激烈争论，他们认为他们实际上是原始人。为了解决这一争端（并为埃及人民争取应有的地位），萨墨提库斯对婴儿的第一句话产生了浓厚的兴趣，这种兴趣源于他对发现人类语言起源的渴望，并导致他进行了第一个已知的儿童语言发展实验。显然，他设法把两个新生儿带到一个牧羊人身边，独自生活在羊群中。这个原始实验的协议简单明了：牧羊人的责任是喂养和照顾婴儿，确保他们绝对听不到人类的语言，耐心等待并仔细倾听婴儿的第一句话。他的假设也同样清晰：在没有任何语言输入的情况下，这些婴儿说出的第一个词将揭示哪种语言是所有人类语言的起源。事实证明，牧羊人报告说，孩子们说的第一个词是“becos”，这个词他们反复地说，兴奋地伸出双臂。当Psammetichus得知“becos”是弗里吉亚语中面包的意思时，他第一次接受了弗里吉亚语而不是埃及语是人类的原始语言。
Across the centuries, people have been fascinated with infants’ first words. This fascination is not a special characteristic of parents of young children, developmental psychologists or psycholinguistics. Instead, this fascination is widespread, and infants’ first words can serve as entry points to heated discussions of topics as far ranging as innate knowledge, the nature of intelligence, and the development of national character.Thanks to the writings of the Greek historian Herodotus, we can trace the fascination with infants’ first words to the time of Psammetichus, an Egyptian pharoah who reigned in the 7th century BC. According to legend, Psammetichus held firmly to the belief that the Egyptians were the most ancient peoples in the world, but this was disputed hotly by the Phrygians, who argued that in fact they were the originals. To settle this dispute (and to claim the Egyptian people their rightful place), Psammetichus developed a passionate interest in infants’ first words, a passion that stemmed from a desire to discover the origin of human language and that led him to conduct the first known experiment on language development in children. Apparently, he somehow managed to bring two newborn infants to a shepherd, living alone amongst his flock of sheep. The protocol for this proto-experiment was simple and clear: It was the shepherd’s responsibility to feed and care for the infants, to make sure that they heard absolutely no human language, and to wait patiently and listen carefully for the infants’ first words. The hypothesis was equally clear: he reasoned that in the absence of any linguistic input, the first word uttered by these infants would reveal which language was the origin of all human languages. As it turned out, the shepherd reported that the first word uttered by the children was" becos", a word they uttered repeatedly and excitedly with their arms outstretched. When Psammetichus learned that “becos” was the Phrygian word for bread, he accepted for the first time that Phrygian, and not Egyptian, was the original language of humankind.