Autonomous Languages of Twins

Abstract

Twins are regularly reported to invent languages of their own, unintelligible to others. These languages are known as autonomous languages, cryptophasia or idioglossia. Despite current belief, this is not a rare phenomenon. Autonomous languages exist in about 40% of all twins, but often disappear soon. In this study, nine autonomous languages are compared: the circumstances in which they emerge, how these languages relate to the parents' language (the model language) and how they are structured. The prototypical situation is one in which two or more close siblings (not necessarily twins) grow up closely together during the language acquisition period. If an adult model language is frequently absent, the children use each other as a model and acquire the language imperfectly. The language may stabilise at that level. If a model is completely absent, the children probably do not create a language. In all cases known, the language consists of onomatopoeic expressions, some invented words, but for the greatest part of words from the adult language adopted to the constrained phonological possibilities of young children. These words being hardly recognizable, the language may turn out to be completely unintelligible to speakers of the model languages, but they resemble each other in that they lack morphology and that word order is based on pragmatic principles such as saliency and the semantic scope of words. Neither the structure of the languages nor its emergence can be explained by other than situational factors.

Aspectos fonoaudiológicos e pediátricos na linguagem de gêmeos monozigóticos

“…Dentre essas famílias, duas relataram a presença de uma linguagem diferente entre as crianças (por volta de 12 meses de idade) (7) . Já em duas famílias, de acordo com os pais, os gêmeos apresentaram um atraso no desenvolvimento de linguagem, mostrando uma comunicação oral ainda pobre, com vocábulos ininteligíveis e só utilizando a fala quando estritamente necessária (2) .…”

“…Soma-se aqui outro aspecto relevante que diz respeito aos índices de Apgar baixos entre os recém-nascidos gêmeos (4,5) . Quanto aos aspectos interacionais, verifica-se que a estreita relação intragemelar pode reduzir a necessidade do desenvolvimento verbal e diminuir a motivação para se comunicar, levando ao aparecimento da chamada linguagem secreta, ou seja, uma comunicação própria entre os gêmeos (6)(7)(8) . Assim, tendo sempre a companhia do outro, não surgiria a necessidade objetiva de contato lingüístico com outras pessoas, constituindo um fator cristalizador do atraso.…”

Dvojcata Asociace: The First International Twins Conference in Prague, Czech Republic. Research Reviews: Twinning trends in East Flanders; Twinning trends around the world. Twins in the News: ‘Mixed race’ twins; Mysterious languages; Piano duo; Happiness and more

“…He also indicates that cryptophasia occurs among 40% of twins, but does not cite a reference. I believe the original source of this much-quoted statistic is Bakker (1987), and is a figure that requires current confirmation. An informative source on twins' language development is a set of companion papers by Rutter, Thorpe, Greenwood, Northstone, & Golding (2003) and .…”

The ‘idioglossia’ cases of the 1890s and the clinical investigation and treatment of developmental language impairment

“…It is still applied to cases of developmental language disorder but now is more often applied to the circumstance of a private twin language (e.g., Bakker, 1987).…”