do you think that... if a group of babies grow up till they become adults without hearing any single word from any language and they just comunicate with each other all the time r we going to know the original languge of the humans since we r alredy have an international baby language which disappear when the baby grow up and learn his parents language.
2006-12-05 03:12:34 · 4 answers · asked by ink 2 in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
Well, you would definitely have an interesting, if cruel, experiment there, but not the original language. The language from which all others evolved was already a complex human language (although the religious argument that Adam learned it from God is simply a myth). That earliest common language was about 100,000 years ago when the last bits of cognitive evolution in Africa opened the door to truly complex language. Before that, language was much simpler and probably as much gestural as oral. And the notion that there is "an international baby language" is false. Babies begin hearing, from the earliest moments of their life, linguistic input from their parents. That is what they begin trying to imitate from the very beginning. They are not born with language, but with the ability to learn a language.
2006-12-05 03:34:05 · answer #1 · answered by Taivo 7 · 2⤊ 1⤋
Plato believed that babies are born knowing everything, with perfect knowledge which fades from them as they grow older. This is an old world, classical era belief.
If infants are raised in a group without contact with any adults, however -- something that would be cruel and highly unusual -- it is possible they would develop their own language. A developmental theorist (Erik Erikson or B.F. Skinner, for example) would have a theory about this.
I doubt, however, that it could be proved that the language developed by these children in this experiment is the "original human language." The circumstances are different, and this might change the outcome. We are not genetically the same as our earliest ancestors, and this might have an outcome. And so on -- even if we wished to conduct this experiment, the results are uncertain and would not prove what you hope them to prove.
Having said all of that, good for you for thinking and wondering. It's an interesting question.
2006-12-05 03:27:59 · answer #2 · answered by matrolph 2 · 1⤊ 1⤋
I think they will keep on talking to each other with that language ... but I don't think this is our original language ... since our original language is the language of Adam which Adam learned by god before he fell to earth
2006-12-05 03:15:55 · answer #3 · answered by Luay14 6 · 1⤊ 1⤋
huh? sounds like you learned that way.
2006-12-05 03:20:05 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋