Exhibit 1.7

So Heather sent me this article which ends with the often pondered scenario of what would happen if a group of infants found themselves stranded on an island in the Galapagos (which is surprisingly specific on the location of the island of abandonment but disturbingly ambiguous on the number of children. Would some parents just not come forward when the Baby Plane crashed?) Would the children create a language? If so, how long would it take and what kind of language would it be?

Of course, nobody answers with Yes, 9 years, French which is, of course, correct.

Far more interesting to me are the other tangents here about what kind of society these plane babies would construct on a well-charted island in the middle of a tourist destination. I imagine them staring longingly at passing nature cruises but unable to express their confusion because another plane baby has the conch and is berating a local waiter in perfect French.

I'm surprised no one pointed out that these plane babies would most likely be assholes. Actually, Noam Chomsky probably did.

The question linguists should be asking--and, by the way, I think it wouldn't be all that hard to get this experiment off the ground. Babies, land, and time are pretty much our most abundant resources--is how complicated the rules governing the conch would be. The correct answer is, of course, very.