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Carregando... How Language Began: The Story of Humanity's Greatest Invention (2017)de Daniel L. Everett
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Registre-se no LibraryThing tpara descobrir se gostará deste livro. Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro. I found this book a bit abstract at times but it was fascinating nonetheless. Its central argument is that language is not just speech, but something that arises from a culture and need to communicate, which is why language has been around longer than most assumptions go—so Homo erectus would have had language in order to accomplish spreading over the world. Daniel Everett's main thesis is that language was invented by humankind, and is not the result of its being hardwired into mankind's brain. In fact, Homo erectus began language (not proven) and, additionally culture, which all Homo Sapiens have today. Language is a nexus of society, conversational analysis, semantics, lexicon phonetics, and history; and not that language is a recursive grammar. Grammar is just an attribute shown by the fact of its complexity and that almost n grammar is universal. Language also did not come about through catastrophic change. Language evolved by the process called uniformitarianismand results from the environment humans encountered. The merge concept which has a binary focus cannot be shown to be true, because of the extraordinary variety of languages. Individual grammars evolved both horizontally and vertically with symbols and paradigms appropriate for that language. I remember David Bellos stating that languages change from each other just to be different and nothing particularly grandiose. sem resenhas | adicionar uma resenha
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"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? Daniel L. Everett, a "bombshell" linguist and "instant folk hero" (Tom Wolfe, Harper's), provides in this sweeping history a 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. Although fossil hunters and linguists have brought us closer to unearthing the true origins of language, Daniel Everett's discoveries 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 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. How Language Began ultimately explains what we know, what we'd 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."--Goodreads.com. Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
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Instead, Everett proposes that language evolved gradually and as its utility (anthropomorphizing heavily here, but w/e) became obvious to evolution and selection for the parts of our neural and gross anatomy used in linguistic processing and production happened. Brains got bigger and areas within them got tweaked and enlarged to help humans 'do' language. The anatomy of our mouths and throats also underwent modification to enhance our production of speech sounds.
The upstart of this is that Neandert[h]als could speak (a view held by most anthropologists and linguists today) and probably our earlier ancestors (e.g., homo erectus) could too (a less common view, but in no way beyond the pale; the author holds this view as well).
The problems I had with this book were its unevenness and repetitiveness. At times things were overexplained while at others things were not. Much information is repeated ad nauseam -- for example a quotation about evolution satisficing, though at no point does he bother to point out that it's a portmanteau of satisfy and suffice. Sure, most people either know or will figure it out, but given the repetitive explanations of other things... wtf?
Finally, an error that irked me greatly. The author has done a lot of work in the Amazon and purports to speak Portuguese (which, not Spanish, is the official language of Brazil). However, he makes an observation about Portuguese verb conjugation that is flat out wrong. Wrong and something that one would learn in the 2nd week of a course. In the grand scheme of the book it's not a problem, but it is plainly wrong and no one who speaks the language even a little would ever claim. This sort of thing makes me wonder what other plainly wrong things are stated as facts. ( )