Jean Berko Gleason —
Unfolding Language, Unfolding Life


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is Professor Emerita of Psychology at Boston University.

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"You're not an old man."

"That's good!"





Thank you so much. I enjoyed your program very much.


Sandra Hodges





What questions would you have asked?

Yes, what questions would you have asked?












Here's a link to an article about the artists who made the cave paintings, many of whom may have been women, based on analyses of the hand prints they left. I also checked my records, and my letter to the Boston Globe noting that we shouldn't just assume that the pictures were all made by men was sent in 1980! If the link doesn't show, you can search for "women artists cave paintings" and articles will pop up from National Geographic and the Smithsonian, as well as others.




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This interview, and the embedded clips, are a beautiful gift. We do know, however, that autistic kids are not only motivated to connect and develop language, but do so naturally. They are the kids identified by Ann Peters and Barry Prizant in the 1970s as 'gestalt language processors.' Perceiving much larger 'units' of sound than 'analytic' children, neurotypical and autistic gestalt processors first perceive 'units' that can be whole songs, flows of intonation, or the sounds that accompany a scene, a media rendition, or a snippet of life. Here is a link to a book and articles by Marge Blanc that tell the other part of the story of natural language acquisition in autism:

The articles are available at: Marge Blanc's book is entitled Natural Language Acquisition on the Autism Spectrum: The Journey from Echolalia to Self-Generated Language (Communication Development Center, 2012). Barry Prizant's latest book is Uniquely Human: A Different Way of Seeing Autism (Simon and Schuster, 2015)

Has she or does she know work being done on Tourette's and/or swear words coming out in the elderly. I was a caregiver for my motherinlaw who had been a prim and proper Southern "Lady" all her life but became a swearing fend as dementia approached. Where does this verbal proclivity come from?

The year my twins were 2, we lived in Berlin, and they attended a small all-German daycare. B/t our flat and the daycare was a neighborhood toystore, and (may not surprisingly) our #1 souvenir from that year was the collection of Schleich animals figures we slowly acquired. The twins are college juniors now, and we still call polar bears Eisbaers! They're also very into figuring out how to teach computers to learn like humans do, and I just sent them Dr. Gleason's explanation of what it means to be human--self awareness and the ability to reflect. On Being informs my parenting, my teaching, my research and my own self-awareness every single week--thank you!

I always find On Being fascinating but this particular program just resonated as we observe our grandchild # 8. We do not always have the time to concentrate on what our kids say or grandchildren but every point mentioned, from animals, feelings, storing knowledge, and the "ed" at the end of words that is corrected developmentally, was just excellent.
Thank you! elaine

I loved listening. And I am also fascinated by what comes out of our mouths...and the why and how and when of the what that comes out. Languages came easily to me as well, and I plan to learn more than the 5 I have already studied. And years ago, as a stay-at-home mom and attachment parent, ( and a talker ;) I experienced both of my children speaking early. They each have lists of the first few months of words they said, with the date when they first said them. (Once verbal, I kept a running list for several months for each: they are now 17 and 22.) As well, I marvelled at how they said certain funny things--how they pieced together the parts. When around five, my son said two priceless things. The first was the question: "Was the world black and white before it got coloured?" And, "Mom, can you get the 'wak' out of my ear?" Of course,I surmised, laughing. If he has 'waks' in two ears, he clearly only had 'wak' in one ear. I felt lucky to hear such a neologism. My sister, when around three, said while travelling en famille, in the car, "I heard a smell." ( I'll leave that for your imaginations. ;)
Thanks for the great show.

I hope you can answer this question. I have been thinking a lot about language and I love trying to learn a new word or sentence from a language. I have always and as I come from a German ancestry I was wonder if it is because it is part of my DNA although I was not born in Germany and never spoke the language while growing up. It then got me to wondering how does language evolve when there are so many different languages being spoken all over the world and children learn , hello, yes, no, please, thank you in their Mother tongue yet it is the same in all languages the same words just differently pronounced. then we have English which attempts to interpret every language and this confuses me more as to why there are so many languages and everyone wants to learn english! I believe you are correct professor Gleason, Language is as important as the quest for exploring Outer Space or the Deep Sea, well at least for me.

Listened to the unedited version. About "ambiguous" in German (my mother- tongue): try "zweideutig", "uneindeutig", "unklar" (because we can be ambiguous, we too. ;) )

Message to Prof Jean Berko Gleason - I understand your origins are Hungarian (and so am I - a Hungarian) I don't understand that you never researched your own language that is the most interesting language and nothing is like it.
Could you please elaborate on it why not?
Thank you