The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language

published	July 19th 2007 by Viking Adult
binding	Hardcover
isbn	0670034908 (isbn13: 9780670034901)
pages	336
description	A compelling look at the quest for the origins of human language from an accomplished linguist Language is a distinctly human gift. ...more [close] A compelling look at the quest for the origins of human language from an accomplished linguist Language is a distinctly human gift. However, because it leaves no permanent trace, its evolution has long been a mystery, and it is only in the last fifteen years that we have begun to understand how language came into being. The First Word is the compelling story of the quest for the origins of human language. The book follows two intertwined narratives. The first is an account of how language developed—how the random and layered processes of evolution wound together to produce a talking animal: us. The second addresses why scientists are at last able to explore the subject. For more than a hundred years, language evolution was considered a scientific taboo. Kenneally focuses on figures like Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker, along with cognitive scientists, biologists, geneticists, and animal researchers, in order to answer the fundamental question: Is language a uniquely human phenomenon? The First Word is the first book of its kind written for a general audience. Sure to appeal to fans of Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct and Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, Kenneally's book is set to join them as a seminal account of human history. [close]
date added	03-13-07 edit book

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David rated it:

12/29/07

bookshelves: read-in-2007, words-and-language

Read in December, 2007

Split into two parts, because of length:

“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...more Split into two parts, because of length:

“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.
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Jodi marked it as to-read

08/11/07

bookshelves: languages, to-read

NY TIMES REVIEW

August 12, 2007
Look Who’s Talking
By EMILY EAKIN

THE FIRST WORD

The Search for the Origins of Language.

By Christine Kenneally.

357 pp. Viking. $26.95.

Academia, unlike every other sector of our culture, has apparently been considered too dull and esoteric to merit a reality show, but now there’s a natural vehicle: evolutionary linguistics, an emerging field awash in colorful personalities, wacky experiments and enough conflict to carry several seasons. D...more NY TIMES REVIEW

August 12, 2007
Look Who’s Talking
By EMILY EAKIN

THE FIRST WORD

The Search for the Origins of Language.

By Christine Kenneally.

357 pp. Viking. $26.95.

Academia, unlike every other sector of our culture, has apparently been considered too dull and esoteric to merit a reality show, but now there’s a natural vehicle: evolutionary linguistics, an emerging field awash in colorful personalities, wacky experiments and enough conflict to carry several seasons. Don’t let the name throw you; the scientists who study the origins of language are a passionate, fractious bunch, and you don’t have to be an egghead to be tantalized by the questions that drive their research: how and when did we learn to speak, and to what extent is language a uniquely human attribute? Call the show “American Babble.”

In this field, physical evidence is scarce — language, except in its written form, leaves no trace — and scholarly clout depends on a capacity for ingenious inference and supposition. Christine Kenneally, a linguistics Ph.D. turned journalist, shrewdly begins “The First Word,” her account of this new science, with candid portraits of several of its most influential figures. Appropriately, the first chapter is devoted to Noam Chomsky, whose ideas have dominated linguistics since the late 1950s, and who, as Kenneally reports, has been hailed as a genius on a par with Einstein and disparaged as the leader of a “cult” with “evil side effects.”

According to Chomsky, humans are born with the principles of grammar hard-wired in their brains, enabling them, from an early age and without formal instruction, to construct an infinite variety of sentences from a finite number of words. Moreover, Chomsky has suggested, language is a peculiarly human phenomenon, a trait so remarkable that evolutionary theory is virtually helpless to explain it. “It surely cannot be assumed that every trait is specifically selected,” he wrote in 1988. “In the case of such systems as language ... it is not easy even to imagine a course of selection that might have given rise to them.” Chomsky’s impatience with the question of language’s origins effectively squelched inquiry into the subject for decades. (In a sense, Kenneally notes, such considerations had been taboo for much longer: although Darwin noted similarities between human speech and sounds made by monkeys and birds, and speculated that language “has been slowly and unconsciously developed by many steps,” by the mid-1870s the linguistic societies of Paris and London had formally banned all discussion of evolution.)

Lately, however, Chomsky’s grip on the field has loosened, thanks to half a dozen or so determined upstarts, among them his former student Philip Lieberman, who has mined the human brain for evidence that language evolved from organs, like the basal ganglia, that we share with many other species; the primatologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, who taught a bonobo named Kanzi the comprehension skills of a toddler; and the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, an early champion of the notion that Chomskyan theory is compatible with Darwinian axioms.

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