Genie

1. What was Psamtik's experiment? What did he hope to learn? Did he?
Psamtik's experiment was too put two babies into a hut completely by themselves for two years in an effort to find out what the protolanguage is; the first language humans ever spoke. He did not learn what it was, although he thought he did, for many reasons.
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 hinted at this when he said that language in itself is still not resolved. There are new theroies and the question is still open. Linguistics is still an unfinished study. We still don't know for sure what our "first" language was or even if there was a "first" language.
3. Why do Linguistics and Astronomy "constitute an unlikely sisterhood"?
Because both studies are expanded from observation; there is no way to actively study linguistics in an experiment the same way there is no way to study astronomy in an experiment.
4. Why was the Social Worker concerned about the young girl that came to her Welfare Office with her mother?
Because she was completely malnourished, weighing only 59 pounds and was only 54 inches tall at the age of 13, and seemed completely unreactive. She seemed almost robotic, not interacting with anything.
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.
First, people belived that god gave them the gift of language and "Who are you to question god?" but over time a new theory gained support; that we were born with it and it was inherent within our bodies; that it was seperate from our souls. After awhile this was questioned by cases of children who were raised in solitude and who possessed no language skills at all, and a new theory gained prevalance; that we must be taught language for us to effectively utilize it. Thus it evolved from religious to biological to psychological.