2567: Language Development - Revision history

FaviFake at 10:41, 28 July 2025

2025-07-28T10:41:55Z

Mushrooms at 12:17, 7 July 2025

2025-07-07T12:17:24Z

172.70.86.142: /* Explanation */ Me wants explain more. Do me say good?

2024-11-10T13:02:35Z

‎Explanation: Me wants explain more. Do me say good?

172.71.154.39: /* Explanation */

2024-11-09T23:34:08Z

‎Explanation

172.71.242.84: /* Explanation */ If an mdash (I'd have used a semicolon), don't make it look like the hyphen.

2023-10-10T23:39:24Z

‎Explanation: If an mdash (I'd have used a semicolon), don't make it look like the hyphen.

AgentMuffin at 17:09, 10 October 2023

2023-10-10T17:09:55Z

162.158.190.3 at 15:53, 10 October 2023

2023-10-10T15:53:11Z

172.69.199.147: /* Explanation */

2023-10-10T03:42:47Z

‎Explanation

FaviFake at 09:20, 25 August 2023

2023-08-25T09:20:18Z

Yellow Candy 8432: I changed the baby's transcript so that it's actually saying Melg- Pl(e)hk- like in the comment. They're not separated by a vertical line.

2023-07-23T18:59:19Z

I changed the baby's transcript so that it's actually saying *Melg- *Pl(e)hk- like in the comment. They're not separated by a vertical line.

@@ Line 8: / Line 8: @@
 ==Explanation==
-[[Megan]] and [[Cueball]] are having what could appear to be a typical conversation about her child's ability to learn languages really fast. But for the joke, the comic mixes up two possible meaning of "language development:" the development of an individual person {{w|language acquisition|learning a language}}, and the development of languages themselves over time.
+[[Megan]] and [[Cueball]] are having what could appear to be a typical conversation about her child's ability to learn languages really fast. But for the joke, the comic mixes up two possible meaning of "language development:" the development of an individual person {{w|language acquisition|learning a language}}, and the development of languages themselves over time. The conventional meaning of {{w|language development}} is the process by which infants begin to talk, that is to understand and produce intelligible speech. The field of {{w|language acquisition}} (sometimes called... language development) seeks to understand how baby humans are able to rapidly comprehend, internalize, and begin producing a new language. Instead of starting with {{w|babbling}}, the first stage of normal language development, this baby's form of "language development" seems to be the linguistic form: going through all of the theoretical stages of the evolution of the English language, from Proto-Indo-European to Germanic to Old English.
 In {{w|comparative linguistics}} and {{w|historical linguistics}}, {{w|Proto-Indo-European_language|Proto-Indo-European}} is a theorized common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. {{w|Proto-Germanic_language|Proto-Germanic}} is a reconstructed language formerly spoken in Iron Age Scandinavia. It developed out of Proto-Indo-European and is the proposed common ancestor for all {{w|Germanic languages}}. {{w|Old English}} would have developed out of Proto-Germanic. Modern English developed out of Old English with many additions from French (which comes from a different branch of the Indo-European language family).
@@ Line 44: / Line 40: @@
 [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
 [[Category:Comics with babies]]
-[[Category:Kids]]
+[[Category:Comics featuring children]]

← Older revision		Revision as of 12:17, 7 July 2025
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	[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]		[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
	[[Category:Comics with babies]]		[[Category:Comics with babies]]
		+	[[Category:Kids]]

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 This parody of language development parallels the discredited {{w|theory of recapitulation}} in embryo development, sometimes expressed as "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny", in which a developing animal embryo (ontogeny) was once thought to go through stages resembling successive adult stages in the evolution of the animal's remote ancestors (phylogeny). It also plays off of misconceptions about language evolution. Many people assume that ancient languages are more "pure" and "primitive" and that modern languages are more "complex" and "advanced". The comic takes this idea to its logical conclusion by joking that children should successively graduate between historic languages while learning to speak, which is more obviously absurd &mdash; it would take years to acquire any of the languages involved.
-In linguistics, reconstructed words from proto-languages are commonly marked with an asterisk (*) to show that the word forms are not attested by any historical sources but created as a proposed ancestor word. The baby says the Proto-Indo-European roots that the words "milk" and "please" are derived from. Obviously, the speakers of Proto-Indo-European did not speak in roots, but used words made from the roots, so the way the baby talks does not reflect any stage of development of the proto-language.
+In linguistics, reconstructed words from proto-languages are commonly marked with an asterisk (*) to show that the word forms are not attested by any historical sources but created as a proposed ancestor word. The baby says the Proto-Indo-European roots that the words "milk" and "please" are derived from. Obviously, the speakers of Proto-Indo-European did not speak in roots, but used words made from the roots, so the way the baby talks does not reflect an obvious stage of the proto-language's fully formed use (although it ''may'' happen to reflect some historic protolinguistically-raised infant's personal linguistic step on the way to eventually attaining a full protolinguistic fluency).
 Some sounds babies make are hard to interpret.{{citation needed}} However, humans have a tendency to recognize known things and patterns. They see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear. Thus, a parent familiar with Proto-Indo-European may falsely hear their baby speak Proto-Indo-European by misinterpreting unintelligible sounds.

@@ Line 8: / Line 8: @@
 ==Explanation==
-[[Megan]] and [[Cueball]] are having what could appear to be a typical conversation about her child's ability to learn languages really fast. But the comic mixes up {{w|language acquisition|the concept of learning a language}} and the development of languages over time. The joke comes from a conflation of two different things.
+[[Megan]] and [[Cueball]] are having what could appear to be a typical conversation about her child's ability to learn languages really fast. But for the joke, the comic mixes up two possible meaning of "language development:" the development of an individual person {{w|language acquisition|learning a language}}, and the development of languages themselves over time.
 The conventional meaning of {{w|language development}} is the process by which infants begin to talk, that is to understand and produce intelligible speech. The field of {{w|language acquisition}} (sometimes called... language development) seeks to understand how baby humans are able to rapidly comprehend, internalize, and begin producing a new language.

@@ Line 16: / Line 16: @@
 In {{w|comparative linguistics}} and {{w|historical linguistics}}, {{w|Proto-Indo-European_language|Proto-Indo-European}} is a theorized common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. {{w|Proto-Germanic_language|Proto-Germanic}} is a reconstructed language formerly spoken in Iron Age Scandinavia. It developed out of Proto-Indo-European and is the proposed common ancestor for all {{w|Germanic languages}}. {{w|Old English}} would have developed out of Proto-Germanic. Modern English developed out of Old English with many additions from French (which comes from a different branch of the Indo-European language family).
-This parody of language development parallels the discredited {{w|theory of recapitulation}} in embryo development, sometimes expressed as "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny", in which a developing animal embryo (ontogeny) was once thought to go through stages resembling successive adult stages in the evolution of the animal's remote ancestors (phylogeny). It also plays off of misconceptions about language evolution. Many people assume that ancient languages are more "pure" and "primitive" and that modern languages are more "complex" and "advanced". The comic takes this idea to its logical conclusion by joking that children should successively graduate between historic languages while learning to speak, which is more obviously absurd&mdash;it would take years to acquire any of the languages involved.
+This parody of language development parallels the discredited {{w|theory of recapitulation}} in embryo development, sometimes expressed as "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny", in which a developing animal embryo (ontogeny) was once thought to go through stages resembling successive adult stages in the evolution of the animal's remote ancestors (phylogeny). It also plays off of misconceptions about language evolution. Many people assume that ancient languages are more "pure" and "primitive" and that modern languages are more "complex" and "advanced". The comic takes this idea to its logical conclusion by joking that children should successively graduate between historic languages while learning to speak, which is more obviously absurd &mdash; it would take years to acquire any of the languages involved.
 In linguistics, reconstructed words from proto-languages are commonly marked with an asterisk (*) to show that the word forms are not attested by any historical sources but created as a proposed ancestor word. The baby says the Proto-Indo-European roots that the words "milk" and "please" are derived from. Obviously, the speakers of Proto-Indo-European did not speak in roots, but used words made from the roots, so the way the baby talks does not reflect any stage of development of the proto-language.

@@ Line 34: / Line 34: @@
 ==Trivia==
-*This was the second comic to come out after the [[Countdown in header text]] started.
+This was the second comic to come out after the [[Countdown in header text]] started.
 {{comic discussion}}

@@ Line 30: / Line 30: @@
 :Megan: He's only 1, so he still mostly speaks proto-Indo-European.
 :Megan: But we've heard a few Germanic words already, so Old English can't be far off.
-:Baby: *Melg-
+:Baby: *Melg- *Pl(e)hk-
 :Cueball: They progress so fast!