Adam’s Tongue: How Humans Made Language, How Language Made Humans by Derek Bickerton (PDF)

Description

How language evolved has been called “the hardest problem in science.” In Adam’s Tongue, Derek Bickerton—long a leading authority in this field—shows how and why previous attempts to solve that problem have fallen short. Taking cues from topics as diverse as the foraging strategies of ants, the distribution of large prehistoric herbivores, and the construction of ecological niches, Bickerton produces a dazzling new alternative to the conventional wisdom.Language is unique to humans, but it isn’t the only thing that sets us apart from other species—our cognitive powers are qualitatively different. So could there be two separate discontinuities between humans and the rest of nature? No, says Bickerton; he shows how the mere possession of symbolic units—words—automatically opened a new and different cognitive universe, one that yielded novel innovations ranging from barbed arrowheads to the Apollo spacecraft.Written in Bickerton’s lucid and irreverent style, this book is the first that thoroughly integrates the story of how language evolved with the story of how humans evolved. Sure to be controversial, it will make indispensable reading both for experts in the field and for every reader who has ever wondered how a species as remarkable as ours could have come into existence.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐”Adam’s Tongue” is the first book by Bickertonthat I read and that I do not find round.The other books by Bickerton I’ve read were”Language and Species” and”Language and Human Behaviour”.In addition,I have found a pair of errors in this one.Both are related to Chomsky.The book is not round because it is unbalanced.Bickerton splits language evolution inthree stages: ACS (Animal Communication System),protolanguage, and language.This requires to explain two transitions,that this book does not treat equally.The bulk of the book is about the first one,from ACS to protolanguage,and it devotes only the last of its twelve chaptersto the second one,from protolanguage to language.Of course,the author is free to choose what to write about,and the first transition was surely crucial.But to say that syntax,that is, the invention of sentences,just prevents some ambiguities, and makes a morefluid communication, was, for me, too little.Because it does not explain how thissecond transition, being so little,was the cause of an incredible creativity explosion,and also the cause of our success as species;too much success, in my opinion,as we are a plague.Concerning the errors,Bickerton misunderstands Chomsky.In section “With my method, you canlearn language instantaneously”, pages 185-187,Bickerton says that, for Chomsky,language acquisition is instantaneous,and not the process it really is.But what Bickerton himself says regardingthis very same transition is exactly that.Please refer to section “Linguistic versusprotolinguistic modes”, pages 234-236,where Bickerton explains thatthe transition from no syntactical speechto language with syntax can not be gradual.The second error is deeper.Chomsky writes, page 187:“It is a logical truism that protolanguageeither involves a recursive operation or is finite”,and Bickerton says that it is false, becauseprotolanguage is sequential and infinite.But, Bickerton’s sequences are not truly sequences.I mean, they are sequences because we canonly utter one sound each time, but,as word order is not important, thenwhat counts are just the words that are said.That is,there are not sentences in protolanguage,there are only isolated words.In section “Pidgins fly to the rescue for real,this time”, pages 223-226, Bickerton showshow protolanguage could have been.On the other hand, while there are severaloperations to get infinities,as iteration and recursion,they are all mathematically equivalent.Turing, for example, showed thatTuring Machines, that use finite automata, andChurch’s lambda calculus,that uses recursive functions,are equivalent.Because of this, Chomsky’s sentencethat Bickerton says is falseis true.And when then Bickerton presented a list,that is, a sequence, as a counter example,Chomsky just answered, page 187,that you can build a list with recursion,a fact that any lisp programmer knows.

(a b c) = (cons a (cons b (cons c '())))

In the end, I get the feeling thata personal issue is bendingBickerton otherwise strait judgment.It is a pity, because the book is great.His proposal to explain the first steptowards language is sound, andthe parallel he draws with antsis intriguing and unsettling.But even more important thanthe specific proposalis how Bickerton frames the problem.Protolanguage is what results fromthe invention of words, andwords are free from the necessityof the here and now. Soto understand language evolutionthe path towards freedomshould be investigated.

⭐I’ve been reading many books to see what current thinking is on why we evolved a few hundred thousand years ago but only recently grew in number and complexity. Bickerton holds that language is the key to higher thought and therefore progress and then sets about describing his theory for the origins of language. In a nutshell he says that “power scavenging” of big animals urged us to cooperate at a level above that required for hunting. Fair enough, its plausible. That said I find that he dismisses the evidence for rapid development of language too easily in the face of equal evidence that our cultural complexity lagged until recent history. He believes that modern tribes that have language but no cultural development beyond what you would expect by our earliest ancestors as an edge case rather than the more obvious reasoning that symbolic language, by itself, did not drive humans to develop quickly. I find it far more likely that language developed rapidly and something else opened the way for humans to develop new niches and complex culture and technology. One hint is in the theories in Guns, Germs and Steel, that the appearance of animals which could be domesticated provided more protein and idle time to certain regions which in turn could afford to specialize. Further that book argues against language, war, genetics or other factors as the determinant of rapid growth. I believe that Bickerton unknowingly aligned his theory by pointing to “power scavenging” which would have supplied higher value food with less effort than catchment scavenging enabling humans to advance in complexity. In the end I think he overestimates the central role of language in progress and underestimates human inertia and need for energy to progress – power scavenging, herding, oil – just look at the population growth since oil was harnessed (1bn to 7bn in a century).Its a good read, one of the few that boldly goes into the lions den to shake up the evolutionary pride. We need better explanations for language development (this book being an admirable example) and the discontinuity of human progress (which this book washes over with awkward assumptions because it couples progress with language development).

⭐Several reviewers here complain about Bickerton’s occasionally nasty tone in this book, particularly regarding the ideas of his colleagues. But I think he gives an unintentional clue to what lies ahead early on, when he says he didn’t have to write this book. He could, he says, have simply laid out by the pool with a pitcher of margaritas and blown the days away. And that may be just what he did here. Imagine yourself sitting out by the pool with one of the world’s top linguists. Let him get a little liquored up, then listen to him hold forth without reservation on a topic that he clearly loves. This is how people actually talk about their work before someone tells them they have to clean things up for tomorrow’s PowerPoint presentation at the office. In this case, we get the dirty version. It may be annoying from time to time, but it is also perhaps more fun overall.This book is a little flatulent, often repetitive, sometimes can’t figure out what its target ought to be. There are interesting suppositions that could easily be right. There are other aspects where I am sure he is either quite wrong, or just looking for answers in the wrong place because those are the only places he knows to look. If you demand *the* definitive answer to the question of where language came from, this book isn’t it. But neither is any other book you’re likely to read in any current lifetime. It is a good run at at least some of an answer, which will probably lead to more of an answer later on. That’s how science works.

⭐I love this book partly because of the way it’s written. I expect this type of book to read a bit dry (I’m used to that in scientific books anyway so I don’t mind) but I was surprised at the author’s eloquence and ability to analyze a complex subject using simple words. The text simply flows, which makes it an easy and very pleasurable read, almost like a fiction book. The arguments the author makes are very interesting too, he’s not afraid to question other people theories and his analysis is thorough, and it seems like he might actually be the one who’s right in the debate on the origins of language. I’ve read quite a bit regarding human prehistory and I know it’s hard to find books whose authors try to be objective and try to really exhaust the subject, so I was happy to have found this amazing read. BUT, as someone has mentioned in another review, I do feel like there’s something missing at the end, as if the author wanted to write a Part 2 in which he’d sum up what he wrote in this one. This book ends too quickly, it should be much longer as a long summary is needed after such a detailed analysis of various issues. I felt a bit cheated, if I am to be honest, because after this very interesting ride I expected a great conclusion, some kind of bang. I thought I’d walk away transformed. Instead, the book lost impetus in the end and I walked away slightly dissatisfied. Still, this is by far the most interesting book about language that I’ve ever read. It makes you think and it really transports you to those prehistoric times you’re reading about. I like the author’s approach and I think that all in all he’s done a great job. I just hope that Part 2 is on the way.

⭐I must first of all say that I found his style overly combatative, beyond the necessary in pointing out flaws in rival theories, at least in the beginning of the book. I found my back being put up and they weren’t my theories! Not being familiar with all the approaches I felt I was at times being presented with caricatures with objectionable elements being exaggerated. That said, he makes substantive points, particularly as to necessary conditions that other approaches either ignore or have very unsatisfactory explanations for. And it is entertaining!When the positive message starts around chapter 5 (with some groundwork earlier) I found it really exciting and hardly put the book down until the end! Whilst there is speculation which Bickerton acknowledges, and probably any theory in this area is bound to have some, he does provide a plausible and at times probable path towards complex language from non-combinatorial signals with the necessary aspects addressed.Bickerton has two main points. Firstly, what the first steps towards language away from normal animal communication systems must logically have been.Secondly, that there must have been some fairly unique evolutionary niche that proto-humans found themselves in, or created for themselves, that meant that some steps in language beyond here-and-now manipulation or warning were advantageous. Afer all, only one evolutionary line with language has survived to the present day. Apes, in particular, have done it once. Why not other times unless any were in direct competition with the homo sapiens line?I am tempted to layout the whole theory and various asides but that is not my place and, if interested, you really should read this book!

⭐Somewhat harder going for the lay reader than the author’s ‘Bastard Tongues’ this is still good stuff and deserves a wide audience. Anyone who can take on Naom Chomsky deserves a read.

⭐Bickerton gets a little bit carried away with his discovery of “ecological niche theory”, which, after all, is anything but new (though formerly called by slightly different names), and his sudden political correctness was annoying. In fact, I almost gave this book four stars because he insists, first, that protolanguage began when cooperation was needed to scavenge dead meat, a situation that could just as easily be applied to hunting, and, second, he suggests that women were likely equal participants on such dangerous scavenging forays based on nothing at all but today’s “common sense”. But this is still a top-notch, truly adventurous survey of the field in which Bickerton uses both erudition and wit to take on those who hold to the notion of most scientists and evolutionary psychologists that all that’s human can be traced to deterministic biological or genetic sources. This includes Noam Chomsky with whom Bickerton had been formerly closely associated, at least in the minds of the academic public. And this is one of Bickerton’s strongest suits: In the face of new evidence he has changed his mind about several of his cherished ideas – the most prominent being that an evolutionary mutation in the brain must have led to higher intelligence and hence to the development of language.This time Bickerton takes his stand with the environmentally-specific necessity for cultural invention that, over many millennnia, led to changes, first, in brain function, and then in cerebral structure itself. He makes a strong case. In doing so, he produces a bracing read with ascerbic wit, self-mockery and genial arrogance. Not only does this make for zesty reading, but he reveals hard-earned insights in layman’s terms. These days, symbolic cultural invention has been pushed aside in favour of the smooth evolutionary transitions evidenced in the breakthroughs of genetic science; instead, Bickerton shows that, fundamentally, humanity must have invented itself. Why? Out of sheer necessity – in this case the necessity of telling tribemates about a new source of dead meat far away that can only be scavenged by large, cooperative groups. The communicative signal must do more than cause a reaction in the here and now (as amongst most other animals). It must indicate a common need, a far-away place, and perhaps the kind of animal. Such indexical signalling he sees as the rudiment of the birth of symbolism, which he now accepts and is his second great shift. His acceptance of symbolism – required for basic displacement (signals referring to distant places or even times) as the source of protolanguage (rather than complex gestures) – came after many exchanges with Terrence Deacon, but symbolism is really only hinted at by displacement.Real symbolic interaction can begin only when symbols refer recursively and reflexively to other symbols, so a whole new world of imaginative symbolic culture can be entered and humanity can henceforth begin its expansion across the globe as the most adaptable of species because of its complex culture. This would be the move into actual language with syntactical structures that Bickerton reasonably guesses took place within the last 100 to 200 thousand years. Protolanguage, however, may go back to the beginnings of H. erectus and, if so, continued with little change for a few million years. He prefers to focus on the advent of protolanguage, very important but still not the crux of the truly human. Very little time is spent on the miracle of the emergence of real language, which must have been the cultural invention par excellence, since it led to the human consciousness we now find ourselves within. Only with the appearance of syntactic structures and, more important, the need for semantics (meaning!) did the human imagination reach out into the unknown and create a truly human universe.

⭐The author seems more interested in proving how stupid other researchers are than putting his point over. Half way though I gave it up.

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