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Abstract• Intro
– Burling’s goal is to “show that the development of syntax as we can observe in children, gives no support for the belief that syntax comes suddenly” (298).
• Early Learning– “…learning…occurs silently before children actually produce the
forms they have learned” (298).• Late Learning
– “…fairly basic syntactic learning is still going on considerably beyond the age at which it is generally considered to be complete” (304).
• Middle Years– “…it is still the case that the best evidence for the progressive,
step by step growth of syntax comes from the classical period for language acquisition, from about 1 ½ years old to 5” (306).
• Conclusion– Burling argues “in favour of the gradual development of syntax in
evolution, not on the grounds that children learn gradually, but on the grounds that this is the way evolution works” (308-9).
Robbins Burling
• Born on April 18, 1926 in Minneapolis, Minnesota • Received his Bachelors Degree from Yale University and his
Ph.D in Anthropology from Harvard University• Instructor at the Department of Anthropology at the University of
Pennsylvania • Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Pennsylvania • Assistant Curator of General Ethnology at the University
Museum • Visiting Lecturer, Fulbright Program, in the Department of
Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Rangoon, Burma• Associate Professor of Anthropology and Associate of the
Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Michigan
• Currently, he is a Emeritus Professor at the University of Michigan
• Has written many papers about language and culture and the ethnology of India and Bangladesh
Key Terms• Syntax: The study of the rules whereby words or other
elements of sentence structure are combined to form grammatical sentences.– Partial Syntax– Full Syntax
• Protolanguage: strings of poorly joined individual words• “Syntactic Spurt” (Bickerton): syntax develops very
rapidly in children• ‘Light’ Verbs: common verbs, short, general meanings,
easy to learn (go, do, make, give, put)• Ontogeny: origin and development of individual
organism from embryo to adult• Phylogeny: evolutionary development of an organ• Recapitulation: repetition in development of the
individual of its phylogenetic history
Introduction
• More than one stage of syntax (Carstairs-McCarthy)
• Full syntax came late (40,000-150,000 years ago) and quickly
• Syntax is complex and highly interconnected• *Argument* Partial syntax does not exist and
children jump from protolanguage to full syntax (Bickerton)
• *Argument* Abrupt appearance of syntax in children is an illusion (Burling)
Early Learning
• Learning occurs silently before children actually communicate verbally
• Jamie example• Hirsh-Pasek and
Golinkoff study (How Babies Talk)
• Gerken, Landau, and Remez study
Late Learning
• It may seem like by 5 years of age children have perfect syntax, but this is an illusion—they avoid complex constructions
• Carol Chomsky study• Annette Karmiloff-Smith
study (French children)• Sheldon study
The Middle Years• People typically think that children acquire their
language from about age 1 ½ to 5• “Syntactic Spurt” (Bickerton)• William O’Grady’s Syntactic Development• Adele Goldberg
– ‘light’ verbs
Conclusion
• Burling concludes that if observable syntax in children develop months before they start speaking, and continue to develop up until the age of 10, then “its acquisition is not as magically fast as it has sometimes been supposed” (308).
• If syntax can grow gradually in children, then it could have grown gradually in evolution.
References• Bickerton, Derek. Language and Human Behavior.
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995. • Burling, Robbins. “The Slow Growth of Language in
Children.” The Transition to Language. Ed. Alison Wray. New York: Oxford UP, 2002.
• Golinkoff, Roberta and Hirsh-Pasek, Kathy. How Babies Talk. New York: Plume, 2000.
• Linneman, Ryan. Robbins Burling. 16 Aug. 2001. 31 Oct. 2005
<http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/abcde/burling_robbins.html>.
• Evolution of Language: Sixth International Conference. 6 Oct. 2005. 2 Nov. 2005
<http://www.tech.plym.ac.uk/socce/evolang6/>.