How Language Began

May 15, 2017
A noted linguist explores "the evolutionary history of language as a human invention--from the emergence of our species to the more than 7,000 languages spoken today."Everett (Dark Matter of the Mind: The Culturally Articulated Unconscious, 2016, etc.), the dean of arts and sciences at Bentley University, mixes esoteric scholarly inquiry with approachable anecdotal interludes to surmise how humans developed written and spoken language and why it became vital for survival and dominance. As in his previous books, Everett energetically attacks the long-accepted theory of Noam Chomsky that humans are born with the language instinct, including innate rules of structure. Everett believes that communication with other humans is a learned activity involving multiple parts of the brain. The author began to formulate his overarching theories of language while studying contemporary hunter-gatherers in the Amazon region of Brazil. His research led him backward through the millennia to the dawning of Homo erectus. Because these early humans formed communities rather than living in isolation, Everett emphasizes that the culture helped develop language and that language in turn advanced culture. In Everett's schematic, language and culture are inseparable, although he states without qualification that language is the "handmaiden" of culture. A major draw of this book is the author's extensive theorizing about not only the origins of human language, but also why something akin to the Tower of Babel developed, with clans living in proximity unable to easily understand one another. Many books about the origin of language aimed at nonexperts tend to skim over the Tower of Babel conundrum. That Everett is skilled at leavening an intellectually challenging treatise with humor is evident on the first page of the introduction: he follows the biblical phrase "In the beginning was the word," attributed to John 1:1, with the quotation "No, it wasn't," attributed to Dan Everett. A worthy book for general readers not well-versed in anthropology, neurology, linguistics, and other technical sciences.

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June 15, 2017

In this provocative and ambitious book, linguist Everett (dean of arts & sciences, Bentley Univ., MA; Dark Matter of the Mind) demonstrates the complex and expansive nature of human language and its many communicative forms. Reaching back beyond 6,000 years and replete with many anecdotes and examples, Everett's work describes how humans moved from using "mere communication to language." Applying semantics, linguistic theory, cultural history, and popular culture, he makes a convincing case for the multimodal nature of language--a phenomenon that engages "the whole person--intellectual emotions, hands, mouth, tongue, brain." The richness and intricacy of his ideas seem in part shared with those of psychology professor Michael C.Corballis in The Truth About Language, that human language evolved gradually over time and did not come about as a "sudden emergence." Although detailed and rather sophisticated in its approach and argument, there are no scholarly citations; however, the author does provide a useful "Suggested Reading" list. VERDICT This volume will be of interest to linguists, cultural critics, and anthropologists as well as informed readers interested in the evolution of language.--Herbert E. Shapiro, Lifelong Learning Soc., Florida Atlantic Univ., Boca Raton

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2017
A century and a half after Darwin posited a natural origin for human language, Everett fills in the evolutionary details. Moving far outside historical linguistics, Everett credits Homo erectus with having invented language nearly two million years ago. This communicative invention came notin Everett's viewin one revolutionary breakthrough but, instead, at the slow pace typical of evolution, as early hominids gradually organized themselves in ever-more-complex social groupings, eventually learning to fashion culturally weighted symbols and then to manipulate such symbols in communicative strings, so setting the evolutionary stage for the planet's only loquacious species: Homo sapiens. In advancing this theory, Everett challenges the quite different perspective of Noam Chomsky, the pioneering American linguist who has posited an innate, genetically primed human capacity for grammar as the key to understanding language. Everett attacks not only Chomsky's conclusions but also his Cartesian mind-brain linguistic premises, detecting in those dualistic premises evidence of residual religious beliefs incompatible with Chomsky's own rational materialism. Certain to spark that liveliest form of languagedebate!(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)