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From: Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Elizabeth Bates died (13/12/2003)
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2024 21:51:12 +1300
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
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Only 56. Pancreatic cancer.
An important theorist of children's acquisition of language, and thus of 
language-mind-brain problems generally.
I'm pretty sure I heard her speak once (on the subject of the purported 
"language gene"), but can't quite place the event.
Links lead to the "East Pole-West Pole Divide" in cognitive psychology 
and cognitive neuroscience, which perhaps lasted as long as it takes to 
say it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Pole-West_Pole_divide
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bates

Crystal mentions in particular the idea of "proto-words", not in the 
historical sense, but vocalizations that come between babbling 
(sound-practice) and the first real words, which seem to have a stable 
form and, perhaps, meaning, except that nobody knows what it is. I 
recall spending an evening in the company of a young fellow in his 
second year of life, who seemed to speak whole sentences in this way. 
His parents could not tell me what he meant, but I put the tape recorder 
on anyway. "Just wait until he learns to talk," I thought, "then we can 
play the tape and ask him 'What did you mean by this, or that?'"
It didn't happen.