Kenneth Hale (1934 - 2001), Linguist MIT (Polyglots) Language Learning Forum

Kenneth Hale (1934 - 2001), Linguist MIT
Tags: Hyperglot \| Biography \| Endangered Language \| Linguistics \| College/University \| Polyglot
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Journeyer
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Message 9 of 16

17 September 2006 at 11:07am | IP Logged

Quite so, Patuco. It's a bit inspiring, I think, for those who are interested in
learning uncommon languages. Stigma might be too strong of a word, but
if I was learning Hawaiian or something like that, I'm sure many people
would think I've lost track of reason...And yet Kenneth Hale took them
seriously and made the very good point that if only the major languages of
the world are studied, then only very little will be understood about
language in general.
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Iversen
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Message 10 of 16

17 September 2006 at 2:51pm | IP Logged

For me the intriguing thing about people like Hale and Mezzofanti is the question: have they got something that the rest of us lack?

My nagging suspicion is that they have some of the faculties such as eidetic memory that otherwise are only mentioned in connection with savants. Eidetic memory can be characterized as memory that sucks up all details and keep them more or less forever with very limited alterations. A savant has those faculties in combination with crippling mental deficiencies, but just imagine what they could be used for in a person with more than average analytical powers and lots of knowledge about language structures! The anecdote with Hale learning Norwegian in the plane suggests to me that there might something like eidetic memory in play, but science isn't built on anecdotes, - you have to examine the geniuses while they are alive.

We have had another thread where the question was asked whether polyglots in general were savants or something like that. I don't believe that most polyglots use anything than knowledge, systematic work and lots of learning materials, but with a few top guns I find that these things don't quite add up, and Hale is one of them.

Edited by Iversen on 02 November 2006 at 9:59am
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lengua
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Message 11 of 16

17 September 2006 at 4:03pm | IP Logged

^ Reading the various anecdotes on his retirement tribute page suggest he had a remarkable capacity for remembering brand new linguistic 'snapshots', if you will. Sort of like the kind of guy who could be introduced to 15 different people in a party, and at the end of the night, would be able to say goodbye to all of them by name. In addition to the quotation I posted on the previous page, here are some more parts that struck me from the tributes:

Quote:

Maybe the myths about Ken as a language savant are true. After all, he did come back to the department suddenly speaking Japanese after watching the mini-series Shogun with subtitles. I remember going to him my first year at MIT and discussing some ASL data that I thought might lead to a generals paper. A full year later, in the middle of a practice presentation for my generals exam, he raised his hand and corrected me on an ASL example that was inconsistent with the ones he had seen the year before. And, I had indeed mis-signed the example.

Quote:

He remembers problems for a rainy day. Ken is infatuated with the sound-meaning correspondence: he takes obvious pleasure in hearing and repeating whole sentences, then the next second he'll fix on a particular formative and ask 'what does it MEAN?'. Of course, the only way you can ask this question is by adopting a theory of the whole sentence, and if no good answer presents itself then that theory is probably no good either. But if he thinks of an answer, he'll make up a new sentence straight off and try it out on the nearest native speaker. Recalcitrant examples, he stores away until some day he'll pop them out--often at a thesis defense--and tell the candidate 'I always wondered about this fact in Navajo (Bengali, Korean...), but now that you show how works in Hausa (Fon, Mandarin...), I think I know why.'

Quote:

I'll never forget the time I had given you a handout containing St'at'imcets data, and we were to have an appointment. I walked into the appointment, and you immediately began writing St'at'imcets sentences on the board. Without looking at the handout. Making up St'at'imcets sentences from scratch (without mistakes), and in addition telling me how they reminded you of switch reference in a language I had never even heard of. There is no-one else who can instantly draw connections between phenomena in different languages the way you can.

Quote:

In addition to Ken's wide-ranging theoretical interests, his commitment to in-depth study and description of innumerable less well-known languages, and his depth & breadth of knowledge of crosslinguistic phenomena, one of the things that has made a lasting impression on me was the way he could talk to me about my own work on Zuni, despite not having worked on the language himself (probably the only one of the world's languages where the latter is the case!). I would meet with Ken to discuss some problem in the analysis of Zuni and and in the course of the meeting cover a lot of data. I would give Ken the written form of only the Zuni examples and simply give their glosses and translations orally. Ken of course would retain all of this information during the course of the meeting and be able to refer back to data we had already talked about. But then I would come back, say a month later, to discuss these or perhaps other Zuni problems and Ken would remember all of the forms and the data without needed a gloss of them again, and in fact would cite them back to me from memory in his questions, "What about [insert complete and grammatical Zuni sentence]?" What would have been an astounding feat for others I quickly learned, to my delight, to take as par for the course in working with Ken and I have always felt exhilarated about this fact, being able to work with him in a way that I could work with no one else.

To that list, I think we should also add Mandarin. And Patuco, I agree. But then again, I imagine for someone who languages just made 'sense' at this level, learning say, Warlpiri, would have just as much of a value as learning Basque. FWIW, I'm personally in awe of his ability to raise two sons to be fluent in Warlpiri - the language in which one of his sons delievered his eulogy.

Edited by lengua on 17 September 2006 at 4:05pm
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Alois M.
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Message 12 of 16

27 March 2011 at 5:49am | IP Logged

Ken Hale was, without a doubt, one of the most remarkable linguist/polyglots of all time. Unfortunately, though, because seemingly almost nothing first-hand was left about his true language abilities, a very thick cloud of myth began to surround his image, even when he was still alive, IMO. I don't personaly believe a human being is capable of learning a language like Dutch during a few hours airplane trip, another like Japanese by watching subtitled films in it for a few days, or to acquire native-like fluency in something like Irish before he ever landed on the country, as reported in some of those anedoctes. It is natural for lay people to exagerate to super-human level the abilities of great people, oftentimes very much beyond what they actually represented. That's unfortunately, it seems to me, most of what is left about him....
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Fasulye
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Message 13 of 16

27 March 2011 at 9:56am | IP Logged

Thanks for posting these interesting links, Journeyer. Very remrakable about this polyglot is that he was a kind of advocate of many endangered languages. He studied them even if there were very few resources and almost no people to speak these languages with.

Fasulye
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Journeyer
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Message 14 of 16

27 March 2011 at 5:28pm | IP Logged

My pleasure, Fasulye. This man seemed to be a true example of a good human being, not just for his advocacy for the "voiceless" but also because he seems to have left a heartfelt and positive impact on so many.
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Fasulye
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Message 15 of 16

23 January 2012 at 6:57am | IP Logged

There is an interesting article describing the biography of Kenneth Hale, the famous linguist of the MIT in the United States.

MIT News: Kenneth L. Hale, linguist and activist on behalf of endangered languages, dies

Fasulye
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montmorency
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Message 16 of 16

14 October 2012 at 2:33pm | IP Logged

Another old thread I'm glad I found.

I'm only sorry Cainntear is no longer around. If he were, I would ask him:

Do you think that Hale had really "learned" these languages or had he "merely" "remembered" them?

Cainntear would often make this distinction, citing for example people who have attempted to memorise whole dictionaries. It's convenient to have one in your head, but it doesn't mean you've learned the language; thus Cainntear.

I was (am) never quite sure if I agreed with Cainntear on this or not. At the end of the day, what is the difference?

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