ALPHABETICAL BRAIN™ VOCABULARY HUMANIST GALAXY OF SECULAR SCIENCE STARS May 15, 2020 HOW LANGUAGE BEGAN: The Story of Humanity's Greatest Invention by Daniel Leonard Everett. Liveright Publications/W. W. Norton, 2017 (i-xviii, 330 pages) BOOK OUTLINE LIST OF FIGURES (xi- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (xiii- PREFACE (xix- INTRODUCTION (1- PART 1 — THE FIRST HOMININS () 1) RISE OF THE HOMININS (13- 2) THE FOSSIL HUNTERS (36- 3) THE HOMININS DEPART (48- 4) EVERYONE SPEAKS LANGUAGES OF SIGNS (65- PART 2 — HUMAN BIOLOGICAL ADAPTATIONS FOR LANGUAGE () 5) HUMANS GET A BETTER BRAIN (111- 6) HOW THE BRAIN MAKES LANGUAGE POSSIBLE (134- 7) WHEN THE BRAIN GOES WRONG (160- 8) TALKING WITH TONGUES (172- PART 3 — THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE FORM () 9) WHERE GRAMMAR CAME FROM (197- 10) TALKING WITH THE HANDS (229- 11) JUST GOOD ENOUGH (249- PART 4 — CULTURAL EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE () 12) COMMUNITIES AND COMMUNICATION (269- CONCLUSION (291- SUGGESTED READING (293- NOTES (302- INDEX (309- AUTHOR NOTE, SUMMARY, AND BOOK DESCRIPTION AUTHOR NOTE = Daniel L. Everett is dean of arts and sciences at Bentley University. He has held appointments in linguistics and/or anthropology at the University of Campinas, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Manchester, and Illinois State University. SUMMARY = The book provides a sweeping history and comprehensive examination of the evolutionary story of language, from the earliest speaking attempts by hominids to the more than seven thousand languages that exist today. BOOK DESCRIPTION = Mankind has a distinct advantage over other terrestrial species: we talk to one another. But how did we acquire the most advanced form of communication on Earth? Although fossil hunters and linguists have brought us closer to unearthing the true origins of language, The discoveries of Daniel L. Everett, a "bombshell" linguist and "instant folk hero" (Tom Wolfe, Harper's) have upended the contemporary linguistic world, reverberating far beyond academic circles. While conducting field research in the Amazonian rainforest, Everett came across an age-old language nestled amongst a tribe of hunter-gatherers. Challenging long-standing principles in the field, Everett now builds on the theory that language was not intrinsic to our species. In order to truly understand its origins, a more interdisciplinary approach is needed --- one that accounts as much for our propensity for culture as it does our biological makeup. Language began, Everett theorizes, with the species, Homo Erectus, who catalyzed words through culturally invented symbols. Early humans, as their brains grew larger, incorporated gestures and voice intonations to communicate, all of which built on each other for 60,000 generations. Tracing crucial shifts and developments across the ages, Everett breaks down every component of speech, from harnessing control of more than a hundred respiratory muscles in the larynx and diaphragm, to mastering the use of the tongue. Moving on from biology to execution, Everett explores why elements such as grammar and storytelling are not nearly as critical to language as one might suspect. In the book's final section, Cultural Evolution of Language, Everett takes the ever-debated "language gap" to task, delving into the chasm that separates "us" from "the animals." He approaches the subject from various disciplines, including anthropology, neuroscience, and archaeology, to reveal that it was social complexity, as well as cultural, physiological, and neurological superiority, that allowed humans — with our clawless hands, breakable bones, and soft skin — to become the apex predator. The book ultimately explains what we know, what we would like to know, and what we likely never will know about how humans went from mere communication to language. Based on nearly forty years of fieldwork, Everett debunks long-held theories by some of history's greatest thinkers, from Plato to Chomsky. The result is an invaluable study of what makes us human. BOOK REVIEWS = LIBRARY JOURNAL REVIEW = In this provocative and well-written book, Corballis (psychology emeritus, Univ. of Auckland, New Zealand; The Wandering Mind) makes a strong and convincing argument that human language evolved gradually over time and did not come about as a "sudden emergence" as Noam Chomsky and Stephen Jay Gould have claimed. The notion of the evolutionary nature of human language has gained much currency in recent years, and Corballis's work poses compelling evidence in support of this. The diversity among the more than 6,000 languages that exist may not reflect a progression from one initial tongue to many. In Everett's assertion that the emergence of speech was evolutionary, it is possible that language was initially a combination of sight and sound with "the vocal component gradually increasing, diminishing the role of gestures." He advances the strength of the evolutionary nature of language. As knowledge in the fields of archaeology, technology, neuroscience, and linguistics continues to grow, more will be revealed on this fascinating subject. VERDICT --- Linguists, anthropologists, and general readers interested in the evolution of human-language will appreciate this volume. -- Herbert E. Shapiro, Lifelong Learning Society, Florida Atlantic Univ., Boca Raton BOOK LIST REVIEW = 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 not in Everett's view in 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 language debate! – Christensen, Bryce Click/Tap Star to Return to Humanist Hub: HUMANIST GALAXY OF SECULAR SCIENCE STARS produced by Infinite Interactive Ideas™