Part 4 - Why do we talk? - BBC Horizon

Talking is something that is unique to humans, yet it still remains a mystery. Horizon meets the scientists beginning to unlock the secrets of speech - including a father who is filming every second of his son's first three years in order to discover how we learn to talk, the autistic savant who can speak more than 20 languages, and the first scientist to identify a gene that makes speech possible.
Horizon also hears from the godfather of linguistics, Noam Chomsky, the first to suggest that our ability to talk is innate. A unique experiment shows how a new alien language can emerge in just one afternoon, in a bid to understand where language comes from and why it is the way it is.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Speech
• Language
• Linguistics
• Age
• English
• Development
• Communication

[alphakristjan]

@SongsofInnocence Get off my planet !

[SongsofInnocence]

How is isolating birds less cruel than humans?

[Smennyboy]

@SongsofInnocence I get it that you feel a connection, and honestly I'm not going to burst your bubble.

[SongsofInnocence]

@Smennyboy I resent you calling birds stupid. I believe birds have emotions and can feel pain. I have become friends with many birds in my area. They twitter to me and sit on my fence looking at me. When I'm sad they sense it and come to me and sing. I have seen birds in love with each other. Birds are intelligent in many other ways. If a bird is isolated I thinkit feels pain. That's cruel. You think humans are higher species in some sense?

[Silverag212]

@SongsofInnocence Not less cruel, just more acceptable...

[Smennyboy]

@SongsofInnocence If a bird sees it self in the mirror, it has no idea it's seeing a mirrored image of it's self. That's how "stupid" they are. Of course you can't compare isolating a human and a bird. That's almost on the level of a birds stupidity

[damian13531]

thats a really stupid question.

[skeight976]

"Language just Happened it was Never Planned" a Bright Eyes song lyric

[skeight976]

I have thought about that Forbidden experiment my whole life, crazy its never been done for science, too bad crazy people have done it to others.

[1GodOnlyOne]

Image of God has everything to do with speech -- everything that we are comes originally from him, and we have it in its imperfect form.

[AgApE010]

@1GodOnlyOne

Ooookkkk...

[1GodOnlyOne]

@AgApE010 LOLOLOLOL!!!

Thank you for that -- I haven't laughed so hard since you were a little girl!