The Origin of Language
In the mid-19th century, experts at the helm of the somewhat new field of linguistics formally banned all research pertaining to the origin of language. They considered it pointless.
But recently the topic has come into vogue, due in part to the fact that after linguistics had its heyday in the middle of the twentieth century, the only way to keep going forward in the field was to look back. Also, with the advancements in neuroscience, psychology, and genetics, looking for the origin of language became a more palatable endeavor.
This search is relayed in Christine Kenneally’s new book, The First Word, which provides an overview of the “hardest problem in science today.”
She begins, of course, with Noam Chomsky, who saw the human brain as unique among living things in its ability to create an unlimited number of sentences through an unlimited number of word combinations. From there she brings us to today, a post-Chomsky era of linguistics with many new theories on the relationship between language and the brain, while simultaneously introducing us to the ideas of today’s prominent linguists, such as Simon Kirby, and other forms of evidence being studied by linguists, such as Koko the communicative gorilla.
