Contradictions And Unanswered Questions In The Genie Case: A Fresh Look At The Linguistic Evidence

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Copyright © Dr Peter E Jones, Sheffield Hallam University. Reproduced with permission. This version exclusive to FeralChildren.com: other versions of this paper have been presented or published in other places.[1]

Introduction

The 'Genie' case (cf. Curtiss, 1977[18]) hardly needs introduction since it is widely known and discussed well beyond the narrow circles of academic linguistics and psychology. The celebrity of the case is due both to its intrinsic human interest and to the fact that it has enormous general scientific, and specifically linguistic, significance. The main findings and conclusions from the linguistic research, very largely the work of Susan Curtiss, concerning Genie's progress in and capacity for language acquisition, are frequently cited in the linguistic and psycholinguistic literature. The principal scientific conclusion drawn from the case is that Genie could not learn English morphology and syntax, a point of view presented rather straightforwardly by Curtiss herself in the following way (in Rymer, 1993[32]):

She was a very communicative person. But, despite trying, she never mastered the rules of grammar, never could use the little pieces — the word endings, for instance. She had a clear semantic ability but could not learn syntax (p. 160, my emphasis).

It is this verdict on Genie's language which has been repeated, uncritically throughout the wider linguistic and psycholinguistic literature (see, for example, Aitchison, 1989[14]; Akmajian et al., 1992[15]; Harris, 1990[31]; Taylor, 1990[33], etc.). The linguistic findings, in turn, have been variously presented by Curtiss and others as critical evidence on such questions as the existence of critical periods in language acquisition, the modularity of mind, and on innate syntactic ability. All of this would, in itself, justify close scrutiny of the original linguistic data and their analysis. The need for a reappraisal of the linguistic evidence has become especially pressing, however, with the appearance recently of new and more complete tellings of the Genie story (e.g. Rymer, 1993[32]; BBC, 1994[16]). These accounts have thrown up many facts about the case which had not been previously published by any of the Genie researchers, and, in addition, have raised serious questions about the validity and ethics of the Genie research programme itself. These issues, too, will clearly need to be addressed at some stage to permit a balanced evaluation of the overall outcomes of the Genie research but are beyond the scope of this paper.

The intention here, consequently, is to present a critical review of the published accounts of Genie's progress in language acquisition, focusing very narrowly on her acquisition of English morphology and syntax, which, for obvious theoretical reasons, has been accorded the greatest weight in the assessments of Genie's linguistic achievements and capabilities. More specifically, this paper will identify what appear to be serious discrepancies and inconsistencies in the accounts of Genie's linguistic development which have appeared between 1974 and 1988. I will suggest, in fact, that accounts up to and including Curtiss (1977[18]) are significantly at odds with accounts from 1978 to date, including that given above from Rymer (1993[32]). These two contrasting sets of accounts will be referred to as 'the (1977) account' and 'the post-(1977) account', respectively.

The data

Genie was first hospitalized in November 1970, at the age of 13 years and 7 months. Observations of Genie's linguistic development began to be made from about this time up until the beginning of 1978. This gives a maximum time period of approximately 7 years and 2 months during which Genie was accessible to linguists and psychologists for research purposes. The vast majority of linguistic data were collected by Susan Curtiss who had continuous contact with Genie over a period of approximately 6 years and 6 months, from June 1971 until January 1978. For convenience of reference, these data will be assigned to the following three time periods:

Period 1: a 4-year period from June 1971 until June 1975 during which Curtiss collected data for her Ph.D. on Genie.

Period 2: a period of 2 years and 1 month, from July 1975 until August 1977 during which no funded linguistic research with Genie took place.