Many babies start saying mama, and papa, at barely 6 months.
Do you really and actually think that a 6-12 month infant have a concept in his mind of what a mother is, or what kind of relationship there is between they and their mother? Do they know what the reproductive process is? Do they also know the familiar relationship with their political-great-aunt or that comes casually at 15 months? One thing is object recognition, and even beings recognition, and one VERY different is consciousness. Many animals do recognize other beings (this I like, this I don’t like), but understanding what another being is… only humans. And not right as they are born, obviously.
There are amplitude of studies about why “mama” and “papa” are the most common first words. They are the easiest to pronounce. It’s not that they think “Oh I must require the attention of my mother I better call her right now, but I can’t quite remember her single name right now, better call her mama”. No, no. They are just making the sound that’s easier to them. And they get a positive reaction out of that sound they are making. Most times also that being that is closer to you and whom you feel attached is also making that sound, so you repeat, get positive reaction, keep repeating easy sound. It’s only later that they figure that the sound they are making actually refers to another being. And at the beginning is just a sound of recognition, that’s not a symbol of intelligence, some animals can make sounds of recognition. Excessive parroting would obviously mean issues as I said parroting is the first stage to human consciousness, if they are stuck there there’s obviously a problem. But without any parroting, then your baby do indeed have a big issue.
Only when there is a developed chain of thoughts in some kind of language the human starts really thinking, starts having what I call a consciousness (the ability to talk to yourself to modify your own behaviour). How would a being be able to talk to themselves to heavily modify some sensorial experience, or to modify your own behaviour if not with a speech of some sort.
I think we see this with one observation. Human beings are distinct to the rest of the animals because we have this ability (I’m into the assumption that you think that humans are the same or really close to the rest of animals). But an infant baby is not that different in behaviour than an animal. And it’s only later in time when they show this fundamental difference. So I think is safe to assume that this difference does not appear at conception or at birth, but some time after birth, it starts developing until is ready.
There are also plenty studies of development issues with deaf children ( https://www.deafchildrenaustralia.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/language-development-deaf-children.pdf ). It’s studied that deafness in children impairs development greatly, and that other means to introduce a language to them is fundamental for their development. If language would be not fundamental for the development of the human experience deaf children would not have problems, as you stated they’ll “naturally” learn concepts before they are introduced to the language to express those concepts. But this is proven false. And deaf children actually have severe issues learning concepts and understanding them at this early stages. And the remedy, of course, is to introduce language to them by other ways than talking. That’s why this issue is not shown on deaf children born from deaf parents, as parents are able to introduce language to they kids by other ways than sound speech.
Many babies start saying mama, and papa, at barely 6 months. Do you really and actually think that a 6-12 month infant have a concept in his mind of what a mother is, or what kind of relationship there is between they and their mother? Do they know what the reproductive process is? Do they also know the familiar relationship with their political-great-aunt or that comes casually at 15 months? One thing is object recognition, and even beings recognition, and one VERY different is consciousness. Many animals do recognize other beings (this I like, this I don’t like), but understanding what another being is… only humans. And not right as they are born, obviously.
There are amplitude of studies about why “mama” and “papa” are the most common first words. They are the easiest to pronounce. It’s not that they think “Oh I must require the attention of my mother I better call her right now, but I can’t quite remember her single name right now, better call her mama”. No, no. They are just making the sound that’s easier to them. And they get a positive reaction out of that sound they are making. Most times also that being that is closer to you and whom you feel attached is also making that sound, so you repeat, get positive reaction, keep repeating easy sound. It’s only later that they figure that the sound they are making actually refers to another being. And at the beginning is just a sound of recognition, that’s not a symbol of intelligence, some animals can make sounds of recognition. Excessive parroting would obviously mean issues as I said parroting is the first stage to human consciousness, if they are stuck there there’s obviously a problem. But without any parroting, then your baby do indeed have a big issue.
Only when there is a developed chain of thoughts in some kind of language the human starts really thinking, starts having what I call a consciousness (the ability to talk to yourself to modify your own behaviour). How would a being be able to talk to themselves to heavily modify some sensorial experience, or to modify your own behaviour if not with a speech of some sort.
I think we see this with one observation. Human beings are distinct to the rest of the animals because we have this ability (I’m into the assumption that you think that humans are the same or really close to the rest of animals). But an infant baby is not that different in behaviour than an animal. And it’s only later in time when they show this fundamental difference. So I think is safe to assume that this difference does not appear at conception or at birth, but some time after birth, it starts developing until is ready.
There are also plenty studies of development issues with deaf children ( https://www.deafchildrenaustralia.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/language-development-deaf-children.pdf ). It’s studied that deafness in children impairs development greatly, and that other means to introduce a language to them is fundamental for their development. If language would be not fundamental for the development of the human experience deaf children would not have problems, as you stated they’ll “naturally” learn concepts before they are introduced to the language to express those concepts. But this is proven false. And deaf children actually have severe issues learning concepts and understanding them at this early stages. And the remedy, of course, is to introduce language to them by other ways than talking. That’s why this issue is not shown on deaf children born from deaf parents, as parents are able to introduce language to they kids by other ways than sound speech.