Pathways to Language: From Fetus to Adolescent

For most people, their greatest intellectual feat is the acquisition of their native language. The virtual universality of individual success should not mask the awesome complexity of the task. Any five-year-old can tell the difference between “It rains, but it does not snow” and “It rains, but it does not matter”, instantly spotting the elusive words to which the impersonal pronouns refer. There are countless examples of subtle and complex linguistic expressions that are rapidly mastered by small children, in any language or dialect. Linguists and developmental psychologists have bravely accepted the challenge of explaining how this tremendous feat is achieved. Some have also written extended accounts for the educated but non-scientific public. Semi-popular books on children’s acquisition of language already constitute a whole literary genre. In this embarrassment of riches, what can Kyra Karmiloff and Annette Karmiloff-Smith offer that is new? The answer — a not altogether appealing one — is their own peculiar view of how children master their mother tongue so well, in so short a time. Annette and her daughter Kyra, both professional child psychologists, deliver a downbeat message formed of an eclectic embrace of many theories and levels of analysis, and a distrust of theorizing, that is entirely devoid of the excitement generated by the newer theories of language. Given that this book is intended for the general public, their message should be received with reservations as to both its content and style. After dutifully detailing the marvel of language acquisition, the authors look at the main current theories in such areas as linguistics, psycholinguistics, developmental psychology and sociolinguistics. These topics are treated competently and concisely, if somewhat tediously. The authors then discuss the art of storytelling, in excruciating detail, describing it as “a milestone” of late language development. Readers who have been excited, puzzled and at times outraged by the novel facts and explanations in Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct (William Morrow, 1994) are now presented, for the price of an occasional yawn, with sedate alternative interpretations of the same stunning data. For instance, children with Williams syndrome have a barely measurable general intelligence and require constant parental care, yet they have an exquisite mastery of syntax and vocabulary. They are, however, unable to understand even the most immediate implications of their admirably constructed sentences. Karmiloff-Smith has for years strongly opposed any separation of language from general intelligence, and her book tries to dampen our amazement at this phenomenon. Errors of syntax are evident in such children if you probe more deeply, the authors say. Moreover, good auditory memory, rather than a separate and intact grammar module, may account for such observations. The authors suggest similar explanations — invoking auditory defects, for example — for other language disorders. One of these, the well-known syndrome called specific language impairment, is, as its name suggests, generally considered to be quite specific to language, though not by the present authors. Other examples of disorders that imply the existence of a specific module for language learning are similarly turned on their heads. According to the authors, the causes are at least partially environmental, not narrowly genetic, and what is compromised in all these deficits is a lot more than just language. The disappointing message is that no clear-cut case can be made for the idea that linguistic capacities are specific and autonomous. And further, no conclusions from studying Williams syndrome or other pathological cases can be applied to the patterns of linguistic development in normal children. Moreover, the authors are keen to stress that linguistic deficits in affected children may be partly a result of an unwitting, anomalous linguistic input from their parents. After an excursion into the main laboratory techniques for investigating children’s acquisition of their mother tongue, we are finally ready to receive the central message: no extant theory can, by itself, explain the process of language acquisition; only the combined force of all the disparate theories can do it justice. This is a bit like saying that the complexity of chemical reactions can only be explained by a combination of the quantum theory of chemical bonds and the theory of phlogiston. Not surprisingly, this programmatic embrace of diverse theories and the pallid combination of so many factors cannot hold the reader’s interest. I do not advocate the triumph of entertainment and elegance over scientific truth, but this is a book intended for a wide circulation. Few general readers will enjoy such a massive dose of disillusionment, even if it were — but it is not — scientifically well supported. An unrelenting pull towards common sense, back to granny’s basic ideas of how children learn language, and the watering down into a generic, sociopragmatic wash of many novel hypotheses that have revolutionized the whole field of linguistics needlessly spoil the fun. Pinker’s linguistic crime stories are allegedly explained away. All that remains is an amalgam of mundane observations and general cognitive mechanisms that have been known for years, slightly pepped up. Karmiloff-Smith is known to distrust those in her profession whom she considers book reviews