The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language

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The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language
by Christine Kenneally
from Viking Adult

Features:

• Bargain Price

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0

• The first book to trace breakthroughs in the new field of language history
  Language's use and development has received much discussion elsewhere, but this is the first book to trace breakthroughs in the new field of language history, showing how a handful of scholars took evolutionary linguistics from speculation to fact-supported science, and surveying how words were made and disseminated. An excellent reader both for college and high-school level linguistics collections and for general readers interested in literary development.
  Diane C. Donovan
  California Bookwatch... more info

• An overview of the discussion
  If you're looking for details on the various schools of thought for the origins of language, go to the sources - Chomsky, Pinker, et al. Several of the reviewers here thought that's what this was (or should have been), but as one remarked, it would have to have been four times longer than it was.
  The First Word is not a technical deep dive; it is an overview of the debate, and as such mirrors many of the biases in the debate. For example, much is said about how Noam Chomsky had (and in many respects... more info

• Very Informative and Approachable
  I thought this was a very fair and balanced approach to the biological and social history behind the development of human language. Though it does not draw any particular conclusions, it presents the reader with several well researched expert opinions on the subject and makes heavy use of science as backup. I am sure it wasn't the absolute authority on the subject of evolutionary linguistics, and there may well be some issues with the book, but I thought it was a great and approachable read for those of us... more info

• The Search is the Thing
  The key word in the title of this book is "search." No one knows much about the evolution of the capacity for language in humans, and even the current state of the capacity is the subject of fundamental debate. Kenneally is best at describing the history and sociology of the conflicting parties to the debate. In the process, the reader will learn a good deal about the structure of the human brain, the nature of adaptation in evolutionary theory, the physiology of sound production, the relationship between... more info

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