Reviews

Abstract

ReviewsDEREK BICKERTON. Language and species. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1990. x + 297 pp.Reviewed by GARY D. PRIDEAUX The origin of language captures our imagination almost as much as the mystery of our species' origin. We share some 99% of our genetic material with our closest primate relative, the chimpanzee, and yet it is we, but not the chimpanzees, who grow crops, build cities, cross seas, and venture to the moon. And it is we, but not the chimpanzees, who talk. How did we come to possess these skills? Why is it that we, and only we, have developed language? In his readable and highly engaging book, Derek Bickerton has taken as his goal no less than an account of the origin and evolution of language. But he does not stop there. Armed with an arsenal of a few powerful concepts, he also attacks the age-old issues of the nature of human consciousness and the relation between language and thought. Bickerton situates his analyses firmly within contemporary evolutionary theory and adduces evidence for his arguments from both linguistics and paleoanthropology.Suggestions about the origin of language have typically been so naive and bizarre that for decades linguists have declared the entire topic out of bounds. For years the prevailing view and conventional wisdom has been: forget the "ding-dong" or "bow-wow" theories; it is better just to ignore the whole mess and hope the origin question quietly disappears. More recently, however, interest in the origin of language has assumed a somewhat more respectable position (see Maxwell, 1984). In 1975, for example, the New York Academy of Science held a symposium on the topic (Harnad, Steklis and Lancaster, 303 304 WORD, VOLUME 42, NUMBER 3 (DECEMBER, 1991) 1976). Similarly, the advent of "ape language" studies fueled the scientific imagination and raised the question of the evolution of human language from more primitive animal communication systems. In this regard, hope was pinned on the suggestion that if the great apes can be shown to have some primitive form of language, this should illuminate the source of human language. Under this view, an evolutionary continuity exists between other primate communication systems and human language.Language and Species consists of nine chapters plus an introduction and an epilogue, and in the first chapter Bickerton tackles the continuity problem. He argues at the outset that any attempt to trace the origin of human language to non-human primate communication systems faces a fundamental "continuity paradox": if language is a communication system, then it must have evolved from an earlier communication system. The problem is that animal communication systems and human language differ not only quantitatively but also, and more importantly, qualitatively. Animal communication systems have a fixed and finite set of topics on which information can be exchanged (food types, predators, etc.), whereas language is open-ended, and we can talk about virtually anything we want. The continuity paradox, then, is that langu...