Psammetichus' linguistic trial: from ontology to a critique of the ancient experiment

The aim of this article is to justify the relevance of the appeal to the ancient linguistic experiment of the Egyptian pharaoh Psammetichus (VII century B.C.), connected with the problem of language origin and the process of language acquisition. This experiment is considered in the context of general philosophical problems of language origin, theological and rational foundations of language, innateness and sociality of human speech, language acquisition. The Herodotus' story, which tells of the children of the Egyptian king, is considered from the aspects of epigenesis, glotto-genesis, comparative-historical linguistics, the theory of language learning and cognitive linguistics. The article proves that the ancient experiment, in spite of its unacceptability from the point of view of modern socio-ethical principles of modern science, has not lost its relevance and it is a successful example of the use of the experimental method to solve the problem of direct observation of the emergence of human communication systems. The paper analyses the theoretical premises of the experiment and assesses their validity in the light of achievements in comparative historical linguistics, genetics and psycholinguistics. The study points out the assumptions of history that modern science shares, namely the theory of linguistic monogenesis, the coincidence of phylogeny and ontogeny, the presence of linguistic instinct, etc. The criticism of the experiment related to the results of the analysis of children's speech reveals weaknesses in Psammettich's interpretation of it. The paper argues that Psammetichus' instant rejection of the genealogical myth of Egyptian primacy on the basis of a single linguistic counterargument, makes the story implausible from a sociopolitical point of view. In addition, a formal-logical error in the interpretation of the experiment is fixed, leading to the conclusion about the second place of Egyptians in the genetic hierarchy. Along with this, the glottogenetic philosophical theories of XVIII Vico, Condigliac, Rousseau and Herder are involved in the analysis to interpret its results. The article assesses the extent of the presence of a mythological component in the story of Psammetichus, but emphasises the intellectual and scientific honesty of its author. In the twenty-first century, the ancient experiment continues to carry a complex communicative load, testifying to the longevity of linguistic-epistemological issues. Even if today's linguistic science knows disproportionately more about the properties of language, its general methodology remains the same as that of Psammetichus and the philosophers of the eighteenth century. It is the same way it tries to construct thought experiments on the basis of the received knowledge. All hypotheses retain the same form of "scenarios", representing a figurative construction.

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