I find it very unlikely that no-one before Boas had noticed that children learn the language of the linguistic community that is around them (and not the language of their genetic parents, where different). It seems to me a self-evident truth, and if others hadn't written it down, it was probably because it was self-evident to them too.
I find it very unlikely that no-one before Boas had noticed that children learn the language of the linguistic community that is around them (and not the language of their genetic parents, where different). It seems to me a self-evident truth, and if others hadn't written it down, it was probably because it was self-evident to them too.