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Huh? Feral children can acquire language skills, but they will never have a full native fluency. Genie learned to communicate with language. In OP child's case,

Huh? Feral children can acquire language skills, but they will never have a full native fluency. Genie learned to communicate with language. In OP child's case, she'd be learning language like most people learn to speak a second language late in life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_(feral_child) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_(feral_child)

gfody 10y ago
Cases like this are so rare and so unique that you simply cannot speak in general about "feral children". In the case of Genie she would have acquired some human language from her father in the first 20 months even if she only ever overheard him talking, enough apparently to seed a rudimentary semantic layer in her mind that facilitated her learning more advanced language later on (but nothing approaching full maturity).
krackers 10y ago
Don't people usually learn a second language by bootstrapping on their native language though?
- codyogden 10y ago
  In a formal learning environment like a classroom, sure. Native language (or even another second language) is a crutch to associate concepts in the new language. Informal environments without a base language, I'm not sure many (if any?) know how that feral person learns, but we do know it is possible for them to communicate using language. I think a lack of metalinguistic awareness plays a major role in language learning as the learner would have no way to reflect/process on the language. This skill is huge, and it's built in ages 6-8. This is the language skill that lets us discern literal and implied meaning from language (statements vs sarcasm), reflect on non-literal concepts (idioms and "love") and analyze and correct incoming communications that contain incorrect usage in word choice, grammar or pronunciation (e.g. If someone misspoke "He is...to the store...going," we infer the speaker likely means "He is going to the store"). Without a base language and meta linguistic skills, language learning would be done with very concrete utterances and gesturing which is consistent with immersion learning of a second language, but the learner's fluency will likely never progress to the point that a second language learner's fluency could reach.

gfody 10y ago

Cases like this are so rare and so unique that you simply cannot speak in general about "feral children". In the case of Genie she would have acquired some human language from her father in the first 20 months even if she only ever overheard him talking, enough apparently to seed a rudimentary semantic layer in her mind that facilitated her learning more advanced language later on (but nothing approaching full maturity).

krackers 10y ago

Don't people usually learn a second language by bootstrapping on their native language though?

codyogden 10y ago
In a formal learning environment like a classroom, sure. Native language (or even another second language) is a crutch to associate concepts in the new language. Informal environments without a base language, I'm not sure many (if any?) know how that feral person learns, but we do know it is possible for them to communicate using language. I think a lack of metalinguistic awareness plays a major role in language learning as the learner would have no way to reflect/process on the language. This skill is huge, and it's built in ages 6-8. This is the language skill that lets us discern literal and implied meaning from language (statements vs sarcasm), reflect on non-literal concepts (idioms and "love") and analyze and correct incoming communications that contain incorrect usage in word choice, grammar or pronunciation (e.g. If someone misspoke "He is...to the store...going," we infer the speaker likely means "He is going to the store"). Without a base language and meta linguistic skills, language learning would be done with very concrete utterances and gesturing which is consistent with immersion learning of a second language, but the learner's fluency will likely never progress to the point that a second language learner's fluency could reach.