Of course, the original source was probably Herodotus At 7:19 AM -0600 2/2/02, Jeff Bartel wrote: >On Fri, 1 Feb 2002, Gary Klatsky wrote: > >> I can't remember the pharaoh's name, I think it was Ptamtik II. He believed >> that the Egyptians were the most ancient people and that their language was >> the natural language. Other cultures had to be taught their language. To >> test that he had two children raised without anyone speaking to them or >> their hearing any language spoken. The expectation was that these children >> would spontaneously learn the language spoken in Egypt at the time. >> >According to Rymer (1993), Psamtik I was an Egyptian king in the 7th century >B.C. who desired to know which language was the origin of all others. As >Gary noted, to test this, he used an experiment: > > two infants were taken from their mothers at birth and placed in the > isolation of a shepherd's hut. The shepherd was instructed not to speak > to them. They were reared thus on a diet of goat's milk and silence until > one day two years later when, the shepherd returning to his hut, the pair > accosted him with their first utterance . . ."bekos," which, after some > semantic inquiry on the part of the King, was determined to mean "bread" > in the language of the Phrygians. . . . (pp. 3-4) > >Psamtik's conclusion was that Phrygian was the protolanguage. > >In addition to the obvious ethical issues to which Gary alluded, there are >also a few methodological problems students might be able to pick out. > >Jeff > >Rymer, R. (1993). Genie: A scientific tragedy. New York, NY: > HarperCollins. > >-- >Jeff Bartel >Department of Psychology, Kansas State University >http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~jbartel > >Reading an email message about a new email virus? Getting a note that's >been forwarded to a dozen other people? Before you pass it along, drop >by http://www.US.datafellows.com/news/hoax/ for a list of recent hoaxes >and chain letters. > > >--- >You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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