Lingua ex Machina: Reconciling Darwin and Chomsky with the Human Brain 1st Edition

Over the last four decades, most of the significant contributions to the study of language origins and evolution have come from outside the field of linguistics, which has been dominated by theories of transformational-generative grammar. As articulated by Noam Chomsky, these theories generally agree that the ability to learn and use language is innate and specific to humans; they mostly sidestep the issue of how this ability came to be, preferring to treat it as a given of the human mind.

But, neurophysiologist William Calvin and linguist Derek Bickerton observe in this lively book, language is probably not a deus ex machina invention "tacked onto an ape brain." Instead, it evolved, along with the brain, to accommodate an ever more complex social calculus. The authors suggest that this evolution had two major phases. The first ushered in "protolanguage," individual words with only a rudimentary syntax, while the second brought forth a more complicated syntax that allowed the conception and utterance of antitruths, conditionals, and outright falsehoods. Bickerton writes that "it's words, not sentences, that dramatically distinguish our species from others," while Calvin takes a more pointed interest in neural adaptations that allowed for "structured language"--that is, long statements with embedded clauses and phrases. Their account of human language's origins and development does not reject Chomskyan views of language out of hand, as so many scholars have tried to do. Instead, it attempts to forge a reconciliation of notions of innate structure with those of natural selection.

That's a tall order, and, although their book advances some controversial ideas about the relative importance of social intelligence in language formation, Calvin and Bickerton make a fine and comprehensible effort in its pages. --Gregory McNamee

Eminent linguist Noam Chomsky says (and most linguists accept) that humans are hardwired for speech: as Calvin and Bickerton have it, "Language is a biologically-determined, species-specific, genetically-transmitted capacity," a capacity people have and chipmunks don't. "The next step is for someone to try and find out exactly how it evolved." The authors propose to do just that in this speculative and quite stimulating, if occasionally rambling, volume. Aiming both to explain and to link brain science, linguistics and evolutionary theory, Calvin (The Cerebral Code), who teaches psychiatry at the University of Washington, and Bickerton (Language and Species), a professor of linguistics at the University of Hawaii, have written not a straightforward exposition but a simulated exchange of letters, "set" in an Italian villa. "Bill" writes to "Derek" with a theory or a question, and "Derek" writes back with an example or an answer (and a remark on the scenery). The informal tone helps the authors present material that can get quite convoluted. They write of neurons and the "circuits" or "neural committees" they form; of parts of the brain, such as the arcuate fasciculus; of debates among Darwinians over adaptation, "exaptation," altruism and "group selection." They discuss apes' social groups and emotions (which "do not differ substantially from ours"); protolanguage (what current apes and ancient hominids speak), which has signs and meanings but no real syntax; and finally reach their own theory, in which changes in hominids' neural storage capacity interact with Darwinian social demands to push protolanguage over the top, giving the first human beings the special, evolved ability to formulate, exchange and understand sentences as complex as the one you've just read. 50 illustrations. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.