Genealogy Books - The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language

Back to The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language

Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating:

Summary: Serendipitous reading
Comment: I expected to learn about various theories on the origins of language, but the book does not contain
much on this subject. Instead, it introduces the environment in which such theories may flourish,
and it does it very well : the author has a great talent for writing about science and scientists,
and this suffices to make the book an interesting reading.
As for the origins od language,
I'll have to continue to rely on "The Singing Neanderthals" by Steven Mithen, and chapter 8 of
Jackendoff's "Foundations of language".

Customer Rating:

Summary: Nontechnical overview emphasizing debates between scientists.
Comment: This book is as much about scientific debate as it is about the study of the origins of language.
Noam Chomsky is a big player in her story. You learn a lot about how scientists gradually overcame
their reluctance to study a topic that had once been deemed to be outside the scope of science. I
would have liked to learn a bit more technical detail; in some sections it seemed as if the author
thought readers might not want to take the effort to understand difficult concepts.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Some good ideas
Comment: This book contains a few good ideas, but spends more time than I want discussing the personalities
and politics that have been involved in the field.
It presents some good arguments against the
"big bang" theory of the origin of human language (which suggests that one mutation may have created
syntactic abilities that don't correspond to anything in other species), mainly by presenting
evidence that human language is not a monolithic feature, and that most aspects of it resemble
features which can be seen in other species. For example, some of our syntactic ability involves
reusing parts of the brain that provide motor control.
I'm uncertain whether the "big bang"
theory she argues against is actually believed by any serious scholar, because those who may have
advocated it haven't articulated much of a theory (partly because they think there's too little
evidence to say much about the origin of language).
The most valuable idea I got from the book
was the possibility that the development of human language may have been a byproduct of a
sophisticated theory of mind. Other apes seem to get less benefit from communications because with
only the limited theory of mind that a typical chimp has, there's little that improved communication
by one individual can do to increase cooperation between individuals.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Interesting, but heavy slogging.
Comment: "The First Word", Christine Kenneally's "search for the origins of language" comes with its share of
celebrity endorsements. The back cover contains laudatory blurbs from both Steven Pinker ("a clear
and splendidly written account ...") and author of "The Ghost Map", Steven Johnson, ("a rare and
delightful mix..."). Then there is the following gem on the inside jacket cover - "The First Word is
not only a compelling historical account of our greatest intellectual faculty but a provocative
consideration of what it means, finally, to be human".

Well, it seems hardly fair to
hold an author accountable for whatever silliness her publishers might assemble on a book's exterior
in the interest of boosting sales. Let's just say that this book is ambitious in its scope and that
the author is obviously academically well-qualified. My own formal qualifications in the field of
linguistics are non-existent, so this review is from the point of view of a non-specialist with a
keen amateur interest in the topic.

An obvious question: `is this a book for the
non-specialist?' I think that the publishers would like to market it as such, and that Dr. Kenneally
possibly thinks of it that way. But, much as I wanted to like this book, if it is meant to be
accessible to the general reader, I think it falls well short of the mark. This is not to say it's
not interesting - there are parts which I found fascinating. But it gives the distinct impression
that the author did not have a well-defined audience in mind, or - if she meant it to be accessible
to the general reader - she has not mastered the ability to write effectively for a non-specialist
audience.

The problems manifest themselves in two main areas. First, the question of
scope and organization. There is a definite sense that the author wants this to be a totally
comprehensive account of the current state of knowledge. This is fine, but ultimately greatly
increases the indigestibility of the book. The book's structure is unwieldy to the point where one
wonders whether Viking actually had an editor read it. A "prelude", followed by an "introduction",
leading in to a "prologue"? What were they thinking??? The sixteen chapters of the book follow an
equally awkward organizational structure. Four are devoted to specific linguists (Chomsky, Pinker &
Bloom...). Seven discuss specific features of human language, such as words and syntax, but are
clumsily titled. For example, grouped under the blanket heading "If you have human language..." are
the "chapters"
* You have something to talk about
* You have words
* You have
gestures
* You have a human brain
The next three chapters are grouped under the heading
"What evolves?", and are titled
* Species evolve
* Culture evolves
* Why things
evolve
That the author finds it necessary to remind us that a human brain is a prerequisite
for human language, or does not appear to recognize that "why things evolve" does not answer the
question "what evolves?" are, of course, minor details. Nonetheless, these potentially distracting
irritants could have been avoided, given a little more aggressive intervention by a professional
editor.

The second major problem area - and it's a serious one - is in the author's
style. It would be wrong of me to slam it completely here, there are paragraphs which I found
delightful:

"Even though humans are more closely related to vervets than vervets are to
chickens, it appears that vervets and chickens have converged upon a common tactic for survival. The
forces that led them both to this strategy are powerful, but alarm calls were probably not
bequeathed to them from a common ancestor. In fact, the most important thing that they share with
all the other alarm-call-making animals is that they are small and delicious. Fitch explained: `The
things that have alarm calls are little tiny guys who get eaten by lots of things, and the common
ancestor of chimps and humans wasn't in that category. Humans don't have alarm calls, and apes don't
have alarm calls. It's not that they don't have threats, but they don't have all these different
threats where it pays to be able to refer very rapidly to aerial threat versus ground threat.
Whether you're the Snickers bar of the Sahara or the Snickers bar of South Dakota, you're going to
evolve alarm calls'".

Similarly, the opening `Prelude' to the book is a fluid,
evocative tribute to the power, mystery, and magic of human language. Unfortunately, for every
paragraph that soars, there are three that amount to nothing more than plodding, indescribably dry
accounts of X's 2006 findings about gesturing in bonobos being a partial refutation of Y's 2004
study in vervets. We get it, Dr Kenneally, you know your stuff. What you haven't figured out how to
do is to winnow through the assembled evidence and shape it into a reasonable narrative. Laying
everything out there for the reader to sift through to find meaning is certainly one strategy for
writing a book, but this is not the approach that makes the writing of your colleague Steven Pinker
both edifying and fun to read. To reach a broader audience, an author needs to do better than
this:

"The entropy level indicates the complexity of a signal, or how much information
it might hold, such as the frequency of elements within the signal and the ability to make a
prediction about what will come next in the signal, based on what has come before. Human languages
are approximately ninth-order entropy, which means that if you had a nine-word (or shorter) sequence
from, say, English, you would have a chance of guessing what might come next. If the sequence is ten
words or more, you'll have no chance of guessing the next word correctly."

There are
several problems with this paragraph. The second sentence is so vague as to be effectively
meaningless ("a chance of guessing what might come next" - given even a random guess has some finite
chance of being right, how big a chance are we talking about?). There's the unilluminating,
apparently unnecessary insertion of `say, English'. But the real problem is that the combination of
the second and third sentences don't really make any obvious sense. They certainly don't explain the
concept of ninth-order entropy in an intelligible manner.

Another example. Early in
Chapter 9, there is this sentence:

"Until very recently it was believed only we could
understand or deploy any of the structural devices found in human syntax, but Kanzi showed that this
is not entirely the case."

Sounds like Kanzi is an investigator in the field, and one
proceeds, expecting to hear about the details of Kanzi's study. Well, no, it turns out that Kanzi is
a bonobo we learned about in Chapter 2, with an amazing capacity for language. Clearly, Dr.
Kenneally expects us to have remembered this. The problem is that the book is full of test animals
across the spectrum, from bonobos to dolphins to crows to parrots, many of whom are introduced by
name. The reader can be forgiven for not remembering that Betty is the tool-fashioning crow, not to
be confused with Alex, the garrulous parrot (or his buddies Griffin and Arthur) or Elodie, the
flirtatious elephant. Again, this may seem like a minor quibble, but it is indicative of the
repeated failure of Dr Kenneally to be able to put herself in the place of a reader unfamiliar with
the material being explained.

What is disappointing about these examples, and
ultimately about the work as a whole, is the sense that, with stricter editing, this could have been
a really fascinating book. As it is, it is an interesting book, but one which is very uneven,
requiring the reader to slog through some fairly tedious, unilluminating material to find the good
bits, written for the most part in a style which makes little concession to the non-expert. />
Despite these reservations, I enjoyed the book. I think it doubtful that it will reach as
wide an audience as does, for example, the work of Steven Pinker.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Highly Recommended
Comment:
The First Word is a very well written (as one would expect from a PhD in linguistics from the
University of Cambridge), yet conversational review of the search for evidence of the evolution of
human language. The author makes it clear that she is an evolutionist, but also makes it clear that
researchers have taken two steps forward in understanding how language has evolved but, at the same
time, research has moved us three steps backward. For example, some evidence has turned up of
rudimentary structural abilities in animals but, at the same, evidence has also been gathering that
animals are unable to use other fundamental grammar rules essential to human language (page 164). As
the excellent review in the January 2008 American Scientist concluded, the past two decades have
seen a deluge of books and conferences on the evolution of language, and this book does an admirable
job of summarizing this research. The conclusions of this research, as Kenneally documents, is the
current reality is the field of the evolution of language is in a state of chaos. It is almost
universality agreed that language (but not communicating) is a uniquely human ability and, I would
add from reading this a few other books on this topic, that the enormous gap between human language
and the communication systems used by animals has grown larger as a result of this deluge of
research. I agree with MIT professor Noam Chomsky that no evidence exists for language evolution
and, furthermore, the problem is so difficult that one cannot know how language evolved. Kenneally
did not use these words, but that is the guarded conclusion of her book. And my conclusion is the
deluge of research has shown that human language did not, and could not, have evolved. Nonetheless
the research will continue, and I encourage it to continue because we are learning much about
biology and language from it. Kenneally divided up her book into specific topics, such as she has
one chapter (9) on syntax (word order) and uses an excellent but simple example to explain its
importance on page 155. Even though clearly an evolutionist, this book is a gold mine for
Intelligent Design advocates and one area they need to explore related to their theory.
/>

Back to The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language

Showing page 2 of 4
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |