Prof. Dr Esther Ruigendijk
Institute for Foreign Language Philology

• Photos from the lecture

Why can't monkeys learn Dutch and we humans can? Children can do it even better than adults. Language - whether Dutch, German or Chinese - is something typically human. It is so complicated that nobody has ever managed to teach a monkey or any other animal a human language so well that they can speak it as well as we can. Not even after many years of lessons! Monkeys can learn a few words, but they fail when it comes to grammar - the part of the language that regulates the combination of words in sentences. Young children, on the other hand, master the grammar of their mother tongue almost as well as adults by the age of about six, and that without any lessons. A miracle. What makes our language so complicated, and how do people actually do it: learn, understand and produce language? And how can this be analysed? We will tell you something about what makes human languages so special and what apes cannot learn: Structure.

Moderator: Carola Schede

Wednesday, 2 September 2009
16.30 to 17.30
Audimax, Hörsaalzentrum