ABSTRACT
There are very deep and restrictive principles that determine the nature of human language and are rooted in the specific character of the human mind.
Chomsky, Language and Mind
It is relatively easy to show that humans are innately predisposed to acquire language. The hard part is finding out exactly what is innate, People have indulged in speculation about this for centuries. Over two thousand years ago the Egyptian king Psammetichus had a theory that if a child was isolated from human speech, the first word he spontaneously uttered would come from the world’s oldest inhabitants. Naturally he hoped this would be Egyptian. He gave instructions for two new-born children to be brought up in total isolation. When eventually the children uttered the word BEKOS, Psammetichus discovered to his dismay that this was the Phrygian word for ‘bread’. He reluctantly concluded that the Phrygians were more ancient than the Egyptians.
