Beror vår förmåga att utveckla språk på att den mänskliga hjärnen (till skillnad från djuren) har någon form av specifikt mentalt organ, med en inbyggd, "hårdkodad" grundläggande grammatik?

Eller är språket bara en av många förmågor som hjärnan kan förse oss med, tack vare sin generella och enorma kapacitet att bearbeta den information som den utsätts för?

Försöken att bena ut det har pågått i åtskilliga årtionden. I en ny artikel i Science hävdar Annie Senghas att studier av döva barn i Nicaragua stödjer den första hypotesen, den om en specifik medfödd förmåga att utveckla grammatik.

Forskningen kring NSL (Nicaraguan Sign Language) är inte ny; Den refereras i Steven Pinkers tio år gamla The language instinct (vilket jag för övrigt tycker är en utmärkt bra bok). Wikipedia har bra artiklar om såväl NSL-debatten som hur vi tillägnar oss språk (Language Acquisition). Judy Kegl, en av Senghas forskarkollegor, har en egen sajt med material: SignWriting In Nicaragua.

Artikeln i Science (Children Creating Core Properties of Language: Evidence from an Emerging Sign Language, Science 2004 305: 1779-1782) kräver registrering, men referat finns på åtskilliga ställen på nätet:

"At a school in Nicaragua, deaf children are speaking a new language entirely their own, but it follows rules fundamental to all languages. Researchers report in Science that without coaching, the children used language rules to create a whole new language from the raw material of gestures in order to communicate."
Ljudinslag hos NPR: Deaf Students Form New Language

"...Senghas studied a property common to most spoken and sign languages around the world: that expressions are constructed from pieces with smaller meaning."
Nature: The birth of a language

"Dr Senghas and her colleagues showed the deaf people from each of the age groups a cartoon, in which a cat swallows a ball and then wobbles down a steep road. Then they asked the participants to tell the story.

The oldest group, who invented the initial "crude" form of NSL, told it with one continuous gesture as a hearing person might.

But the younger groups did something different. They separated the movement and direction into separate signs as is done in spoken language.

'If they were just clever at learning they would have learned to do it the way they had seen it being done,' said Dr Senghas. 'But that isn't what they did - they ended up acquiring something different. They ended up breaking down the gestures into something they could build a language out of.'

This is compelling evidence that humans are predisposed to develop language in this way, say the researchers. In other words, children instinctively break information down into small chunks so they can have the flexibility to string them back together, to form sentences with a range of meanings."
BBC: Children create new sign language

Och det går snabbt. "You think it takes years and years of evolution, and then boom, one [language] emerges in a generation," säger Senghas till Nature (länk se ovan).

Invändningar mot Senghas resultat har jag inte sett ännu (dock kritik mot BBCs förenklade sätt att presentera den).

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