Word puzzles

One of the most remarkable human abilities is that of learning a language. Not only do people learn to speak, but more recently they have learned to read — to associate the spoken sounds with written symbols. It is an extraordinary biological achievement, particularly as written language is relatively new. In a new review published (online) within a special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, M. Gareth Gaskell and Andrew Ellis, at the University of York, introduce a series of papers on this most intriguing of topics. While the field has its own researchers, the issues have a wider resonance. The whole concept of information is a biological one and how it is conveyed from molecule to molecule, cell to cell and individual to individual is of increasing interest. The concept of signalling has fascinated biologists. “The symbolic character of a signalling system is crucial, whether in the genetic code, in the control of development, or in human language. Only a symbolic system can convey an indefinitely large number of messages,” wrote John Maynard Smith, a geneticist and theoretical biologist with a great interest in information systems. “Word learning is a fundamental building block in the acquisition of language, and has often been identified as one of the ‘special’ components of language,” write Gaskell and Ellis. “ Humans are phenomenally good at learning words, far exceeding the capabilities of other primates in this respect. By early adulthood, first language speakers will know at least 20,000 base words plus their morphologically complex forms, and some estimates suggest a far higher figure. Furthermore, word learning often appears swift and effortless.” The review covers a wide range of research looking at language learning. “It is generally accepted that the first 12 months of life involve a process of refining and tuning of the phonetic categories that are relevant to the infant’s language. Contrasts that are unused in a particular language will tend to be lost, so that by 10–12 months of age only the phonetic categories that are relevant to a particular language remain.”