William Morse wrote:

There are accounts of feral children/adolescents who've spent all or
most of their lives with wild animals. These children/adolescents once
discovered by humans can't speak any language either than perhaps a
small handful of words. This is for children/adolescents who have spent
years among wild animals. If language was genetically imprinted by the
Baldwin effect it certainly didn't show itself much here. In other
words the greatness of the "developmental plasticity" doesn't seem to
apply here. If language and grammar became incorporated into an
organism's genes the feral child, despite having been raised by wild
animals, would upon reunification with humans arguably learn, aided by
the Baldwin effect, human language. But they really don't. You may see
this as a non-applicable since the child/adolescent is feral and has
for several years been disunited with members of his own species. Most
importantly its development has been irrevocably damaged or stunted. On
the other hand where the glass is half full maybe its astonishing and
indicative of the Baldwin effect that the feral child once reunited
with humans can possibly speak any language at all. The evolutionary
development of language is something we still don't really understand
and the Baldwin effect often seems as a term for that which we don't
understand. I agree that it seems extraordinarily unlikely that such an
instinct arose fully formed by a chance mutation from a human ancestor
that used only chimp like vocalizations but I'm not convinced the
Baldwin effect is responsible here. You state, "Thus we have a
situation in which a skill previously learned (rudimentary language and
grammar) became incorporated in the organisms genes, and in which the
development
of the skill altered the fitness landscape so that eventually only
those with the genetic ability survived (as witness the elimination of
other homo species by Homo sapiens)." This is obviously natural
selection which is sometimes considered a chance mutation. You seem to
be using the term natural selection as more all-encompassing. Do you
really think rudimentary language and grammar is completely "learned"
and becomes incorporated into the organisms genes via the Baldwin
effect? I think, at the very least, chance mutation via natural
selection was and is part of the language equation. I have no idea how
long it would take for such a chance mutation to become "fixed" in a
human population but I imagine it wouldn't be overnight.

Michael Ragland

Feral Children
Encyclopedia of Childhood and Adolescence

The term "feral" means wild or undomesticated. Psychologists have
studied feral children--children reared in complete or nearly complete
isolation from human contact--to gain insights into aspects of human
socialization and development. When feral children enter human society
after their developmental years in isolation, they often continue to be
seriously retarded. Researchers seek to answer the question of whether
the abnormalities existed before their removal from society or
developed because of their isolation.

Interest in feral humans began as early as the 1700s and continues to
modern times. When Swedish naturalist and physician Carl Linnaeus
(1707-1778) developed the system of scientific classification for
plants and animals, he included the classification of loco ferus--"
feral" or "wolf" men, characterized as four-footed, nonspeaking, and
hairy. The 1994 film Nell was based on the true story of a young woman
introduced to society after living for years in near-isolation.

Victor, the "wild boy of Aveyron," is the most famous case of a human
being surviving in total isolation for an extended period of time.
Discovered in 1799, Victor had been lost or abandoned in childhood,
apparently surviving on his own in the wild up to the age of
approximately 11. Philippe Pinel (1745-1826), pioneering French
psychiatrist and director of the Bic