The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language

If you're one intrigued by: * language * evolution * gesture * imagination * similarities and differences between humans and other critters * efforts to teach critters something like human language * titanic scientific and academic tussles * Noam Chomsky, Steven Pinker, & Steven Jay Gould * Darwin, Dawkins, and Diamond * whether a boatload of pre-language infants isolated on the Galapagos would create language on their own * whether robots can create their own languages and hundreds of related topics explored clearly and evocatively, I'd recommend this book with only one reservation: If you're put off by inherently complex topics and want the abridged & illustrated version, you may want to start somewhere else.

The development of our incredible ability to make meanings out scribbles on a rock or a page remains a stunning evolutionary leap. This book is a wonderful outline of some of the factors that went into the development of language. It is also full of interesting insights into the disputes between some of the major experts in the field. Christine Kenneally is a linguist who writes about language for the genera public, and here she stresses the importance of looking at language as a set of abilities, many of which we share with other species. An important key to language, and one that has lead to sometimes fractious debates, is to understand where these abilities overlap with and diverge from those found in species like chimpanzees, monkeys and dolphins. Abstract language may be uniquely human, but most of the neurological machinery that it uses has been present in other species for millions of years. Christine takes us on a journey through gesture and imitation and the evidence that they were important in the development of speech and language. She takes in the whole debate about whether or not speech is the medium of communication with others, while language exists only for communication with ourselves, or whether language and speech are inextricably linked. We learn about the syntax of anima vocalizations and the discovery of FOXP2, a gene of profound importance to the development of human language. Although I have been interested in language for three decades, and thought that I knew quite a lot about it, I finished this book feeling re-energized. After I closed the book I looked again at the title, "The First Word," and marveled at the extraordinary suite of cognitive abilities that enabled me to take those three words, decode them, link them to other thoughts, images and memories, before finally extracting their meaning. That sequence is in itself quite remarkable. It is even more so when we realize that the sophisticated system that we use every day has likely only existed for a few tens of thousands of years. Christine is an excellent writer who not only understands the issues but can also communicate them with a rare lightness of touch. Highly recommended Richard G. Petty, MD, author of Healing, Meaning and Purpose: The Magical Power of the Emerging Laws of Life

Personally, it has always (at least since I started to get the hang of evolutionary theory) seemed pretty obvious that the ability for language must have evolved, along with all our (and other life forms) capabilities and features. It came as a shock, therefore, to discover that the topic had been formally 'banned' in 1866 by the Societe de Linguistique of Paris, and had remained in disrepute for well over a century. Kenneally tells of her own initial encounter with this attitude in the early 1990s in Linguistics 101 at the University of Melbourne. After asking the lecturer about the origin of language, he replied: "linguists don't explore this topic: we don't ask the question because there is no definitive way to answer it"! It seems that much of this attitude in the second half of the 20th century came about because Noam Chomsky - one of the 'intellectual giants' in linguistics - had this opinion, and his opinions tended to dominate a great deal of academic discussion (although to be fair, they did at times generate considerable controversy). Kenneally quotes a story from Paul Bloom: "... A linguistics friend of mine told me in all seriousness about what he called the C-principle. The idea is that if Chomsky believes something, then it makes sense to agree with him in the absence of other knowledge. Because, you know, he is a really smart guy." On the evolutionary side, Stephen Jay Gould apparently also held the view that "the human species was a glorious accident". Naturally, this included human language. The prominence of these two individuals made it difficult for serious research to get started. In recent years, Chomsky himself has published on the topic of language evolution. In many ways, The First Word is the story of how this came about, and the stories of the key researchers who made the idea of the evolution of language 'academically respectable'. It is a complex topic, weaving together a great many threads. Kenneally pulls it all together by focusing on different 'capability platforms' (speech, gesture, and so on) and the ways in which they can be seen to have evolved through different species over evolutionary timescales. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and learned a great deal from it. If I had a criticism it would be that it doesn't explore how language evolution has accelerated in the last 10,000 years or so (aided by cultural mechanisms). However, that is something that would probably require a whole book in its own right, and is arguably beyond the scope of 'The First Word'. All in all, it really shows that no matter how smart someone is, or how great their reputation, they can still be dead wrong about really major questions. Highly recommended!

More than anything else, I came away from The First Word thinking that linguists love to argue. In fact, every few pages I found myself arguing with author Christine Kenneally and I'm not even a linguist. I disagreed with much of the book and wanted more evidence for many of her arguments. But when I find myself thinking about a book this much and discussing it with people at length, I have to give it five stars. The subject is the origin of human language. How did it start? Obviously there's no way of knowing, but that doesn't (nor should it) keep linguists from looking for the answer. Since no one can prove or disprove any of the theories about language origin, it's a free-for-all. Linguists seem to enjoy knocking their colleagues' theories even more than they enjoy defending their own theories. Kenneally is mostly even-handed in her presentation of the many interesting theories currently in debate. However, she chides Martin Gardner for a 1980 article he wrote debunking experiments claiming to have taught chimps, apes, and dolphins human language. Gardner acknowledged the popularity of such experiments, especially when they featured an attractive blonde scientist teaching an ape (evoking Beauty and the Beast) to "talk." Kenneally suspects that no one writes of Chomsky or other male scientists by describing their hair or appearance. Yet Kenneally thinks nothing of mentioning Steven Pinker's "flop of curls" or that Stephen Jay Gould is "short and remarkably loud." Many of the theories about language origin seem to rest on isolated cases. Linguists cite the case of Genie, a girl who was raised by people who didn't speak to her. She didn't learn to speak and when she was removed from the abusive environment as a teenager, she couldn't learn to speak. It is difficult to draw valid conclusions from a few psychologically scarred individuals. Kenneally is a linguist and also a journalist, so she is able to condense and present these complex ideas to people who have no background in linguistics but who are interested in it anyway. Sometimes the going gets a little tough, but there are some amusing asides to ease the way, such as the story of what happened when two gorillas who had learned sign language got together and had a sign language shouting match. It's obvious that there's a lot more that we don't know about language origin and less that we do know. Only twenty or thirty years ago anthropologists were listing the attributes that make us human. Opposable thumbs, using tools, making tools, language, self-awareness. Point by point, evidence has shown that we are not unique, at least not in the ways we had defined ourselves. The same thing has happened with our arguments for why we speak but other animals don't: the descended larynx, the bigger brain, more complex thoughts, a greater need to communicate. Maybe we should stop trying to teach dolphins and apes to use human language and try to communicate with dolphins and apes in their langua

What a fascinating idea for a book! Kenneally, with her simple, witty, journalistic style approach, explores the evolution of language in a manner even a layperson could grasp and enjoy. The book's flow and wittiness will appeal to anyone interested in knowing how our ancestors even started to say the basic words of our languages, wherever they came from. My biggest "take away" from this book is how we, humans, genetically evolved as a special group of species, with an ability to "speak" and communicate with each other, have thrown ourselves into a conflict zone filled with hatred and racism that is sometimes closely related to language. In India, States that speak different "languages" clash over water, land and even movies and movie stars. An outsider will have a hard time differentiating the thirty odd languages that are spoken in different parts of India, but each one of them consider themselves "superior" compared to their counterparts, and stereotype and ridicule each other, politically, and socially . When you closely monitor their linguistic style, it's pretty clear that all of them evolved from very similar sources marvelously described by Kenneally. In Sri Lanka, there is a civil war that is being fought, purely on "linguistic" basis between two groups that speak different languages. Again, when you research, there may not be many differences between those languages as lucidly explained by Kenneally. If you enjoyed Jared Diamond's works, you will sure like this one. Guaranteed. N.Sivakumar Author of: America Misunderstood: What a Second Bush Victory Meant to the Rest of the World