Genie

1. What was Psamtik's experiment? What did he hope to learn? Did he?

Psamtik’s experiment was to place two infants in s hut right after they were born and deprive them of any human contact through language to see what language they would speak on their own. He hoped that this language would be the “world language” or the first language of man. Psamtik thought he discovered this “world language” when the infants uttered the Phrygian word for bread, but it is not very likely that this is the case since this is now a dead language and his test has not stood the test of time.

2. Rymer claims on pg. 5 that "while his experiment was flawed in fulfilling its declared intention...it embodied both the theological questions and the practical quandaries that still bedevil the discipline." Where did Abel hint at this same concept?

Abel hints at this concept many times when he references experiments and other things that were done for a certain purpose that caused people to really think about what was trying to be accomplished.

3. Why do Linguistics and Astronomy "constitute an unlikely sisterhood"?

Because they are both often constrained to be more observational that experimental.

4. Why was the Social Worker concerned about the young girl that came to her Welfare Office with her mother?

Because she was small and withered with a halting gait and curious posture, she was unnaturally stooped with hands held up as though resting on an invisible rail. 5. Consider the history of Linguistics outlined in Chapter

5. Please explain how the study of language grew from the religious to the biological and finally to the psychological.

The study of language started as religious when people believed that the mysterious thing was a gift from God, then it became biological when people believed that language was a creation of humans, and finally it became psychological when people believed that language could be something that was coded into our genes.