The birth of a word

I just watch the first few minutes. Looks facinating. I'll watch the rest tonight.

Thanks Cyracuz

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That guy has waaaay too much data to play with.

Yes, that occured to me as I was watching. I was wondering how they were able to process and categorize so much.

I found the data stuff most interesting. He's a little grandiose about the language acquisition stuff, though. "Scaffolding," for example, is a concept I'm very familiar with -- I can't remember if it goes back to grad school (mid-90's) or more recent reading like "The Scientist in the Crib," but it's definitely not new.

Also the whole ending was kind of weird -- he is aware that people have been doing home movies for really quite a while now, right? (All of the stuff about having a visual record of things that you were too young to remember, etc.)

The first steps were still cute.

(And I love how all of these TED videos are captioned. The gaga->water part didn't translate super well but I got the gist.)

Well, I feel like this was a real bait and switch.

I thought I was going to learn how humans form words, then, in a careless fashion Ted mentions that so-and-so mentioned how this could relate to the media and social networking. No more talk about speech developement. Very disappointing.
Not that the resultant information given couldn't have been interesting to many people, it just wasn't what I was interested in.

BTW, I did not like it that when he showed a picture of his team, he introduced 2 of them by first and last name, and then, what felt like in an off handed fashion, "oh, and jim"

Yes, I also found the data stuff most interesting. At least for now. I would think they need to test this on more than one subject to get any acceptance of this data as relevant to the learning of language for all humans?

Yes, he was a little too quick to skip over the learning of words, but I think what he says about the environment responding to the child was interesting.

Everything we write on this thread is probably being categorized and modeled by a team of MIT geeks with hyper powerful computers (and nothing better to do)... we probably form a landscape of words spread out over the environment of internet forums (all linked to that TED video). From which, someone somewhere someday will probably analyze and draw a logical (but erroneous) conclusion.

Hehe, good point. For all we know we are in his data already...

Yes. I know this is a scientific experiment, but when talking about how the environment adapts to the child, I had to think "well any mother (or child rearing father) could tell you that."

A kid tries a new word, mangles it, caregivers break it down to simpler and simpler pieces, until it's easy enough for the kid to get his mouth around, then you shoot back up as the kid quickly master it.

Same with the red and green colored lines. If you had to put it in words, most people would tell you that you play with a kid, you're teaching, they are learning, then they go off and practice what they learned, by themselves.

What I did find interesting is that the kitchen (I'll bet) is the true heart of the home. Notice of course that's where they identified where the word 'water' was said the most. However, the word 'bye' did not happen mostly by the door, again, it was in the kitchen. That's where you say good bye, then go to the door where you might, or might not, say it again.

Most guys like gadgets. But an average guy will just buy a big-ass flat screen tv and watch sports. When a super-smart MIT guy gets unlimited access to technology and is surrounded by his super smart MIT buddies, this is what you get... a giant orgy of data collection and a desperate attempt to rationalize why so much time was spent in collecting that data.

I agree, and I think those are good reasons why they need more than one child to test this on.
My nephew learned a word for washing machine fairly early. He called it "gunna". It was his approximation of the sound the machine makes. He was exposed to it when he was having his diaper changed in the same room. "Gunna" does not even closely resemble the actual word for washing machine (vaskemaskin in norwegian), but since his word had an association to the actual machine, he was saying "vaskemaskin" as soon as he had enough control of his speech. I am not sure he had been suceptible to that word that early if he hadn't already had a concept of what it relates to, in his case "gunna".

With my 20mth old daughter, I find it almost impossible not to start speaking in her language. I find myself using her words to talk to her rather than using the right word so she can learn it. She calls her bottle "Baba", and now I call it that. It seems that language acquisition is not dead, even in adults (like me). I also find that I shorten my sentences to communicate with her, like "dada cleans baba", rather than "I'm going to go clean your bottle now".

I feel like the primary drive is to communicate, in any way possible. Both of us are working towards that, she by expanding her language and me by simplifying mine.

I completely agree.

You have a 20-month-old daughter! I didn't know that.

You're talking about "motherese" (really "parentese.") I highly recommend this book, "The Scientist in the Crib" by Alison Gopnik:

The Scientist in the Crib on Google Books (link)

Exactly!

Switching gears back to the 2nd part of the video. The section where Ted, when talking about how this effects social networks, media, all the gadety computer images used to show the data...he says something like the implications of all this are huge.

I thought "Yeah, now they'll be able to better figure out how to buy stuff"