About
Description
Explores whether isolated children would spontaneously develop language — tracing experiments from ancient Egypt through modern cases. The evidence points toward language as an innate human capacity, not something purely learned from environment.
Notes
- The core question: if children had no exposure to any existing language, would they create their own? And if so, how complex, and how fast?
- Ancient experiments: Herodotus describes Psamtik I of Egypt (664–610 BCE) isolating two infants to find the “oldest language” — children reportedly said “becos” (Phrygian for bread), taken as evidence Phrygians were oldest. Probably apocryphal but shows fascination is ancient.
- The innate capacity argument: multiple cases of isolated or feral children suggest communication — some form of gesture, vocalisation, or proto-language — emerges even without linguistic input
- Nicaraguan Sign Language: the clearest real-world evidence — deaf children in Nicaragua with no shared language spontaneously created a new sign language in the 1970s–80s. Each generation added grammatical complexity the previous hadn’t had.
- Key insight: language isn’t purely culturally transmitted — there’s a biological predisposition to build communication systems. The specific language is cultural; the drive to create one is innate.
- Connection to language learning: if language creation is innate, then the “barrier” to learning a new one isn’t about linguistic capacity — it’s about the habits and interference from L1
→ See Language