Re: THEORY: Question about the evolution of language

Christophe Grandsire wrote:

>         I don't know if it is a legend or not, but I've heard that this
> experiment had already been done, more than one century ago or so. The
> person who carried this "experiment" thought that those children would
> reinvent Hebrew, as it was the language of the Genesis and so "had to"
> be the original language, other languages being corruptions of Hebrew.
> Eventually, all children involved in this experiment died of lack of
> communication (in fact, they stopped eating and let themselves die).
I believe you're talking about James IV of Scotland, before the
English Parliament invited him to become James I of England (although
I could be wrong with the dating).  As for the veracity of the tale, I'm
not sure;  it could be apocryphal.

At any rate, the Greek historian Herodotos talks about a similar attempt
in his *huge* digression about Egyptian ethnography (the thesis was why
the Persians and the Greeks came into conflict).  According to Herodotos,
the Pharaoh Psammetikhos wanted to know what the oldest race was,
so he ordered a shepherd to take care of and raise two children, with
the stipulation that he was not to speak to them.  He did so, and after
a few years, both of them ran up saying _bekos_, which, the Pharaoh
later discovered, was Phrygian for "bread". So, he concluded that the
Phrygians were the oldest race (and, of course, that the Egyptians were
the second oldest).

It can be read in context at:
<http://classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/history.2.ii.html>

=======================================================
Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: Deuterotom
Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and
oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil
spirits at the dawn of day. - Thomas Jefferson
========================================================