THE FIRST WORD

THE FIRST WORD: The Search for Origins of Language
By Christine Kenneally
ISBN 978-0-14-311374-4
Book Review by George R. Pasley

I saw this book and, being a man who deals in language all day long, I just had to pick it up. I was not disappointed.

Strictly speaking it is not an academic book. It is written for the general population. But it is a book about an academic subject and for the most part it is not “dumbed down.” Consequently it is not a book for the intellectually uncurious.

The book is arranged in four parts. Part one deals with the history of research into the origins of language, which for the most part is pretty recent. Much of the discussion in part one is fairly philosophical and sometimes hard to understand, but a general understanding of what is going on helps lay a framework for the later parts of the book. An interesting side note to part one is the realization that academic debates are sometimes emotional and even knee-jerk reactions, something we might do well to remember.

Part two gets into the nitty-gritty of what we have learned about language, mostly in the last 30 years. It is neatly arranged into seven chapters that start with thought, and proceed through words, gestures, speech, structure, the human brain and human mutations.

By that list alone one can see that a study of the origins of language would involve a great number of disciplines. Research field that have contributed to the subject range form early childhood development to anthropology to robotics. Within these various chapters I found a great many interesting tidbits that tell me how language works: not only the way words work when put together, but how they work in conjunction with gestures, why they work, and why we communicate.

Part three has thee significant chapters on evolution, the first being evolution of species, the second being evolution of culture and the third a description of how things evolve. Kenneally’s argument is that language has evolved on its own, separately from human biological evolution. These chapters contain significant detail on how evolution happens, and they are not for the faint-hearted. The challenge of her argument might be best summed by these words of Kenneally: “The point is that although we experience ourselves in some sense as finished or perfected, we are not in any way intended. There is no blueprint for what humans are meant to be. And as this moment is merely one moment in the past and future history of our evolutionary lineage, your life right now is merely an instant in the past and future history of the interaction between your genome and your environment” (p. 197, italics original). Not especially affirming!

However, there are significant details in this portion, and they are enlightening. For instance, I learned there is no single one-to-one correspondence between specific genes and their expression- for the most part a biological expression is influenced by a host of genes, and they in turn are influenced by the environment.

Part four is very short and deals with the future of language studies and the future of the human race itself.

In conclusion, if you are curious and want answers, this book will provide some. And if you think you know all the answers, this book will leave you with some new questions.

George R. Pasley
July 30, 2008