In July 1954, a British medical journal recorded the extraordinary case of a baby chimpanzee that had been raised like a human child for two years alongside the similarly aged son of an American psychologist.
Gua, reported The Family Doctor, had been "treated not as an animal pet, but as a member of the family - dressed exactly like the child, nursed and trained in the same way, rewarded, scolded or punished in the same way".
At the end of the first year, it was clear that the chimp was out front in the smart stakes; she had learnt to use cups and spoons ahead of her human rival, was walking upright and could recognise 20 commands, including "Open the door" and "Shake hands". The slow-learning chump of a child, meanwhile, was struggling to recognise even three.
What Gua could not do, however, was learn to speak.
By early in the second year, while the chimpanzee was pretty good at acrobatics and scaling stuff, it had become apparent which of the two would be climbing to the top of the food chain. The child "began to use words and phrases quite spontaneously, and to imitate the actions of its elders, in a way that the animal could never manage".
More useful data might be harvested by approaching the question from the opposite direction - would a child raised without human contact lack all speech? Pesky ethics, however, has always prevented such a fascinating experiment, though there are plenty of rural myths about children who have been raised by a varied menagerie of animals. In each case the child, usually discovered before the age of 10, has been reported as being unable to speak, or to learn, human language, while variously growling, hissing or chirping, according to the vocal preference of the adoptive parental species.
At the heart of these myths and a number of ultimately futile experiments with chimpanzees lies the question that has divided the field of linguistics and almost certainly always will do: is language learnt, or is the skill inherent and hard-wired in human beings - and only human beings - as maintained by Noam Chomsky, the pre-eminent linguist, and his legions of devotees?
Within that debate nestles the far more intriguing question of how language happened. Think about it. Did one particular ancient man simply wake up one morning and, instead of announcing his intention to go out hunting and gathering with the usual all-purpose "Ugg", stand up and, to his surprise and that of everyone else's in the cave, say "I'm just popping out to clobber a mammoth for dinner. Anyone fancy joining me?"
Probably not. After all, he would have drawn blank looks all round. Being the first to talk would be a bit like inventing the telephone: what's the point if there's no one to call?
Yet likewise, how could language have evolved as a collaborative, committee-driven Good Idea - and across the globe, more or less simultaneously?
For one thing, how would you get the members of any such committee to the table? Come to that, how would you express the very idea?
Even Chomsky has dodged this question. "It is perfectly safe to attribute this development to 'natural selection'," he once wrote, "so long as we realise that there is no substance to this assertion, that it amounts to nothing more than a belief that there is some naturalistic explanation for these phenomena."
The reality is that, while such speculation is a great deal of fun, the best linguistics brains in the world have never, and can never, come up with a scenario for the birth of language any more or less convincing than the Bible's Tower-of-Babel explanation for how and why our small planet has no fewer than 6,000 different languages confounding our attempts to all get along like one big happy family.
Which is not to say that an army of academics does not persist in this fruitless quest, which has a parallel in the search for an explanation of how the Earth and all its multitude of crawling, swimming, floating, flying, walking and, yes, talking, things came to be. Theories of how the planet and life itself began are no more than that - just theories, which can never be proved.
Likewise language and, in the same way that astrophysicists continue to argue among themselves (Big Bang, 13.75 billion years ago, almost certainly on a Thursday, or continual expansion and contraction, a neat theory of perpetual existence that dodges the impossible requirement for the spatially constrained human brain to envisage either infinity or a time before time?), so linguists continue to toss "what-if" grenades at one another.
One of the academic grenadiers lurking around the edges of the debate is Daniel Everett, something of an anomaly in the field in as much as he entered the discipline through the back door, when he set out in the 1970s as a born-again Christian missionary determined to convert the Pirahã tribe in Amazonia. Instead, they converted him and, in the throes of losing his religion and finding an alternative spiritual meaning in their simple way of life, while mastering their language he discovered a linguistic anomaly that appeared to undermine Chomsky's creed of hard-wiring. It was, as one Harvard cognitive scientist told The New Yorker in 2007, "a bomb thrown into the party".
In 2005, Everett had published his thinking in the journal Current Anthropology. In "Cultural constraints on grammar and cognition in Pirahã", he argued that the language of his indians lacked "recursion", a grammatical capacity that Chomsky and chums had declared to be the cornerstone of all language.
In an interview in 2007, Everett explained recursion thus: "Chomsky has claimed that the fundamental tool that underlies all ... creativity of human language is recursion: the ability for one phrase to reoccur inside another phrase of the same type. If I say 'John's brother's house', I have a noun, 'house', which occurs in a noun phrase, 'brother's house', and that noun phrase occurs in another noun phrase, 'John's brother's house'."
Everett, a former Chomsky disciple, conceded that recursion was "an interesting property of human language". But what if, as he had, one stumbled on a language that lacked such recursion? Did Chomsky's house of grammar fall down?
Such heretical thoughts have led Everett to Language: The Cultural Tool, a fascinating journey through the spoken word, written by a man who has made the equally impressive journey from single-minded missionary to theory-upending academic - a remarkable voyage of self-discovery rewarded first with his appointment to the chair of languages, literatures and cultures at Illinois State University, and latterly by his elevation to the position of Dean of Arts and Sciences at Bentley University, Massachusetts.
The book is, as the author has it, a first-ever "weaving together [of] the findings of modern linguistics, psychology, and anthropology to flesh out the meaning of the hypothesis that language is an artefact, a cultural tool".
It doesn't matter that the average reader will struggle with this concept of language as artefact - something of a conceptual conceit, given the clear impossibility of unearthing language alongside a pot shard on an archaeological dig. This is a book to enjoy, to learn from and to allow thoughts to spiral up and away from, like smoke curling up through the branches of the Amazon canopy.
Take, for instance, Everett's entertaining analogy of the invention of the bow and arrow. As well as his inability to communicate with his neighbours, ancient man had another problem: how to get enough protein to stay alive when most of the available protein was not only averse to being eaten but was also capable of moving far faster than he could.
The solutions were the spear, the slingshot and, finally, the bow and arrow (all of which, of course, also proved handy when it came to inter-human conflict resolution). But how did human beings manage to exist long enough on a low-protein diet to get around - singly, separately and more or less simultaneously - to inventing such vital tools?
The answer is "Who knows?". Today we can no more figure out the process by which such weapons came to be than we can solve the riddle of how the first language committee was called to order. One problem we face is that for millennia bows and arrows were made exclusively of biodegradable material - and artefactual developments such as metal or flint arrowheads tell us no more about the origins of this weapon system than the Rapier surface-to-air missiles the British government is planning to deploy around London to protect the Olympics. Likewise, language has left no fossil record.
Gestated in the soggy, isolated swamps of the Amazon, where he spent many years, Everett's paddle through the tributaries of language is a fascinating and thought-provoking adventure, part detective story, part history and part philosophy of life, and is never dry nor inaccessible.
It culminates in a convincing appeal for the preservation of the diversity of language - an issue of considerable concern here in the Arab world, where English has become the entrenched tool of business and education. Diversity of tongues on Earth, says Everett, "is one of the greatest survival tools that human beings have ... each language is a cognitive tool for its speakers and comes to encode their solutions to the environmental and other problems they face as a culture".
And the loss of any language, he says, is "a terrible human and scientific tragedy ... when a language is lost all of us lose the knowledge contained in that language's words and grammar".
Jonathan Gornall is a former staff writer for The National.
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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Name: Brendalle Belaza
From: Crossing Rubber, Philippines
Arrived in the UAE: 2007
Favourite place in Abu Dhabi: NYUAD campus
Favourite photography style: Street photography
Favourite book: Harry Potter
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The Perfect Couple
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Liev Schreiber, Jack Reynor
Creator: Jenna Lamia
Rating: 3/5
How to protect yourself when air quality drops
Install an air filter in your home.
Close your windows and turn on the AC.
Shower or bath after being outside.
Wear a face mask.
Stay indoors when conditions are particularly poor.
If driving, turn your engine off when stationary.
Greatest of All Time
Starring: Vijay, Sneha, Prashanth, Prabhu Deva, Mohan
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Iftar programme at the Sheikh Mohammed Centre for Cultural Understanding
Established in 1998, the Sheikh Mohammed Centre for Cultural Understanding was created with a vision to teach residents about the traditions and customs of the UAE. Its motto is ‘open doors, open minds’. All year-round, visitors can sign up for a traditional Emirati breakfast, lunch or dinner meal, as well as a range of walking tours, including ones to sites such as the Jumeirah Mosque or Al Fahidi Historical Neighbourhood.
Every year during Ramadan, an iftar programme is rolled out. This allows guests to break their fast with the centre’s presenters, visit a nearby mosque and observe their guides while they pray. These events last for about two hours and are open to the public, or can be booked for a private event.
Until the end of Ramadan, the iftar events take place from 7pm until 9pm, from Saturday to Thursday. Advanced booking is required.
For more details, email openminds@cultures.ae or visit www.cultures.ae
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Tips for newlyweds to better manage finances
All couples are unique and have to create a financial blueprint that is most suitable for their relationship, says Vijay Valecha, chief investment officer at Century Financial. He offers his top five tips for couples to better manage their finances.
Discuss your assets and debts: When married, it’s important to understand each other’s personal financial situation. It’s necessary to know upfront what each party brings to the table, as debts and assets affect spending habits and joint loan qualifications. Discussing all aspects of their finances as a couple prevents anyone from being blindsided later.
Decide on the financial/saving goals: Spouses should independently list their top goals and share their lists with one another to shape a joint plan. Writing down clear goals will help them determine how much to save each month, how much to put aside for short-term goals, and how they will reach their long-term financial goals.
Set a budget: A budget can keep the couple be mindful of their income and expenses. With a monthly budget, couples will know exactly how much they can spend in a category each month, how much they have to work with and what spending areas need to be evaluated.
Decide who manages what: When it comes to handling finances, it’s a good idea to decide who manages what. For example, one person might take on the day-to-day bills, while the other tackles long-term investments and retirement plans.
Money date nights: Talking about money should be a healthy, ongoing conversation and couples should not wait for something to go wrong. They should set time aside every month to talk about future financial decisions and see the progress they’ve made together towards accomplishing their goals.
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Going grey? A stylist's advice
If you’re going to go grey, a great style, well-cared for hair (in a sleek, classy style, like a bob), and a young spirit and attitude go a long way, says Maria Dowling, founder of the Maria Dowling Salon in Dubai.
It’s easier to go grey from a lighter colour, so you may want to do that first. And this is the time to try a shorter style, she advises. Then a stylist can introduce highlights, start lightening up the roots, and let it fade out. Once it’s entirely grey, a purple shampoo will prevent yellowing.
“Get professional help – there’s no other way to go around it,” she says. “And don’t just let it grow out because that looks really bad. Put effort into it: properly condition, straighten, get regular trims, make sure it’s glossy.”
Sheikh Zayed's poem
When it is unveiled at Abu Dhabi Art, the Standing Tall exhibition will appear as an interplay of poetry and art. The 100 scarves are 100 fragments surrounding five, figurative, female sculptures, and both sculptures and scarves are hand-embroidered by a group of refugee women artisans, who used the Palestinian cross-stitch embroidery art of tatreez. Fragments of Sheikh Zayed’s poem Your Love is Ruling My Heart, written in Arabic as a love poem to his nation, are embroidered onto both the sculptures and the scarves. Here is the English translation.
Your love is ruling over my heart
Your love is ruling over my heart, even a mountain can’t bear all of it
Woe for my heart of such a love, if it befell it and made it its home
You came on me like a gleaming sun, you are the cure for my soul of its sickness
Be lenient on me, oh tender one, and have mercy on who because of you is in ruins
You are like the Ajeed Al-reem [leader of the gazelle herd] for my country, the source of all of its knowledge
You waddle even when you stand still, with feet white like the blooming of the dates of the palm
Oh, who wishes to deprive me of sleep, the night has ended and I still have not seen you
You are the cure for my sickness and my support, you dried my throat up let me go and damp it
Help me, oh children of mine, for in his love my life will pass me by.
Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989
Director: Goran Hugo Olsson
Rating: 5/5
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BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE
Starring: Winona Ryder, Michael Keaton, Jenny Ortega
Director: Tim Burton
Rating: 3/5
Simran
Director Hansal Mehta
Stars: Kangana Ranaut, Soham Shah, Esha Tiwari Pandey
Three stars
If you go
The flights
Emirates flies from Dubai to Funchal via Lisbon, with a connecting flight with Air Portugal. Economy class returns cost from Dh3,845 return including taxes.
The trip
The WalkMe app can be downloaded from the usual sources. If you don’t fancy doing the trip yourself, then Explore offers an eight-day levada trails tour from Dh3,050, not including flights.
The hotel
There isn’t another hotel anywhere in Madeira that matches the history and luxury of the Belmond Reid's Palace in Funchal. Doubles from Dh1,400 per night including taxes.