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It's not all talk

It's not all talk

 Adam's Tongue: How humans made    learning in babies and the lifestyles
 language, how language made of hunter-gatherers. At its least
 humans by Derek Bickerton balanced, the book caricatures the
 
 argument for continuity in language
 Finding Our Tongues: Mothers, evolution, which says that humans'
 infants and the origins of language similarity to other animals is relevant
 by Dean Falk to language. Continuists explore all
 
 the ways that animal thought and
1     WHY is it that 20th- communication may have provided a
 century physicists could foundation on which human language
 ask some of the most evolved. Bickerton, however, portrays
 grandiose questions in this approach as a simple-minded
 science, but if a belief that human language evolved
 researcher wondered directly from animal communication.
 aloud where language6     Bickerton's most intriguing
 came from, the argument is that scavenging meat
 response was derisive had huge ramifications for human
 at best. Not only can language. The logistical challenges
 you not answer the of retrieving meat from, say, a
 question, they were mammoth are immense. You need a
 told, you shouldn't even lot of humans to do the work -
 ask. There are many cutting the skin, getting the meat and,
 reasons why language crucially, warding off other predators.
 evolution was a bit of a scientific How do you gather many humans to
 embarrassment, but two are the right spot? To render a
 particularly significant. complicated theory in one word:
2     First was the quite reasonable language.
 objection that there was no tangible7     Where Bickerton is pugnacious,
 evidence. You can't uncover earlier Falk is dispassionate, though she too
 forms of language in the same way sees a crucial role for food in eliciting
 you can track a species through deep language. Falk believes that human
 time. Fortunately, this is changing. language arose from the relationship
 Recent work in areas such as animal between mothers and babies. In her
 cognition, the genetics of speech "putting the baby down" hypothesis,
 disorders and the comparative she notes that while ape infants can
 evolution of the brain are contributing cling to their mothers, human
 to our expanding picture of how children cannot. So when ancient
 language unfolded. mothers had to put their children
3     Language origins, moreover, had down in order to harvest food, Falk
 a whiff of taboo because a dismissive believes they used language-like
 attitude had become entrenched communication as a way of
 among key figures in science. Now protecting and guiding their
 that too is changing. In the last 10 behaviour [id:96438] .
 years there has been a flurry of8     Falk makes a strong case that
 papers, presentations and books on communication between mothers and
 the subject. Two of the latest are babies is a linguistic crucible. She
 Adam's Tongue by Derek Bickerton refutes recent suggestions that
 and Finding Our Tongues by Dean "motherese", the highpitched singsong
 Falk. otherwise known as baby-talk,
4     Bickerton, professor emeritus at is not a universal behaviour. Indeed,
 the University of Hawaii, Manoa, has mothers from all cultures speak to
 been writing about language their children with some kind of
 evolution for a long time. He began motherese, and one experiment even
 his career in language evolution as a showed that mothers make
 devout Chomskian, committed to the unconscious distinctions if they are
 idea that syntax is the be-all and end- using baby-talk with a child as
 all and, ironically, sceptical that we opposed to a pet. Falk, however,
 can know much about language never makes a strong case for
 evolution at all. Over the years, exactly how language was built over
 [id:96436] , he has shown more interest the platform of motherese.
 in other accounts of evolutionary9     Language evolution spoilsports
 change. In Adam's Tongue he will take the differences between
 elaborates on the compelling "niche- these books as evidence of disarray
 construction theory": the idea that a in the field, or even that its underlying
 species creates its environment, question is unanswerable. This would
 which in turn shapes later be short-sighted. Key ideas and
 generations of the species, and so themes, which are bound to influence
 on. future research, appear in both
5     Adam's Tongue is not a books. Watch out in coming years for
 measured overview of the field. more on cognitive/biological phase
 Rather, it is an intensely felt, transitions, the evolutionary
 sometimes very funny and significance of social interaction, the
 occasionally deeply impolite take on asymmetry between speakers and
 what are fast becoming the classic hearers and, one for all of us
 case studies for language evolution - including the physicists, the need to
 vervet monkey alarm calls, singing be wary of blanket explanations.
 gibbons, signing apes, tool use in 
 different species, the emergence of    adapted from Christine Kenneally
 intelligent behaviour, language    in New Scientist, 2009