ABSTRACT

One of the earliest accounts of a study of language and gesture dates back over 400 years to a ruler named Abkus, Emporer of Hindustan, 1542–1605 (Bonvillian et al., 1997). Abkus isolated twenty ‘sucklings’ and ordered them to be raised by nurses who did not speak to them throughout their development and, after a period of years, the children were to be evaluated to determine what language they spoke. The results revealed that the children who did survive communicated not by spoken language, but by gesture alone. This experiment was very cruel, and one that would not be carried out today. The results, however, support the view that language is built upon a primitive gestural system (Allott, 2001), suggesting that language and gesture are intimately related and are indeed a ‘close family’ (Bates and Dick, 2002; see also Corballis, this volume).