Language Development in Feral Children

The Forbidden Experiment

Although it seems obvious to us that an abandoned child will not learn to speak, this was not always understood. See The Forbidden Experiment for historical attempts to determine what language a child would naturally speak.

What many feral children do learn is to mimic animal sounds, and especially the sounds of their host families. Those that have lived with wolves are often reported as barking or whining, and those that have lived wild on their own are sometimes adept at recognising and imitating the sounds of many different birds. In the Optomen Television production Feral Children, Oxana Malaya can be seen running around on all fours and barking like a dog.

The Critical Period Hypothesis

What makes feral children particularly interesting to scientists researching the critical period hypothesis is whether or not they learn to speak after their return to human society.

Sign language

Since language acquisition is so difficult for feral children who've missed out on the critical period, some attempts have been made to teach children sign language. The Kranenburg girl (found in 1717) was successfully taught some sign language, and attempts were also made to teach Genie sign language, to avoid repeating the mistakes of Victor. However, sign language is a language in its own right and requires the same neurological development.

Victor of Aveyron

It seems that Victor of Aveyron was eventually able to respond to some spoken commands, although to what extent he was genuinely understanding the language we don't know. He never spoke. Wild Peter made a few distinct noises himself, of which the two most recognisable were "ki scho" and "qui ca", for King George and Queen Caroline.

Kaspar Hauser

Kaspar Hauser was visited by the Feuerbach in July 1828, who reported on his linguistic abilities. He said that conjunctions, participles, and adverbs were virtually entirely lacking in his speech, and that his syntax was seriously deficient. He showed some similarities with very young children who are learning language, in that he referred to himself as Kaspar, and he generalised concepts, so that all hills were mountains, and a fat man was a man with a mountain. However, when he moved in with Herr Daumer's family he made considerable progress in reading and writing, but never achieved much more than a page of scribbled notions.

Kamala

After five years in the orphange, Kamala was able to talk: she refused to go outside without being dressed, having complained with the sound "Fok" (possibly meaning "frock"), and her vocabulary was thought to consist of about 30 words. These words were not common to English speech, but were sounds. When food was offered she used "Hoo" to indicate "yes", although other children use this word to mean "cold". She was able to name objects, but never used her words spontaneously. Two years later, she had learned more words, but apart from that there was no other mental change.

Genie

Read more about Genie's language development in the book Language Development in Exceptional Circumstances, or online in The Civilizing of Genie by Maya Pines, a chapter from Teaching English through the Disciplines: Psychology, or in Chomsky: The Evidence II, Language Acquisition under Extreme Conditions, a lecture by by Timothy Mason.

Of course, the best source of information is Genie: A Pyscholingustic Study by Susan Curtiss, which you should find in any good library. But if you want to purchase a second-hand copy, it's difficult to obtain, and expensive.