[lit-ideas] Re: The Order of Aurality ratification of fiction
- From: david ritchie <profdritchie@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2012 09:14:53 -0800
The current Alexander Mc Call Smith, "The Forgotten Affairs of Youth" opens
with Elizabeth Dalhousie and son and lover musing on language questions.
She reports that James IV conducted an experiment to see what language
children would speak if they weren't exposed to English. She says he
thought the answer might be Hebrew. He sent two children to Inchkeith
Island to be raised in the care of a nurse who was unable to speak.
Dalhousie and her lover conclude that they children would have invented a
rudimentary language. Something I heard on the radio recently suggested
that without early exposure to language the children not only wouldn't have
spoken, they would have been unable to learn to speak. Something to do
with neural wotsits...about which I know nothing.
David Ritchie,
Not in Edinburgh, Really
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