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From: cl@ (Cameron Laird)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,talk.origins,sci.bio
Subject: Announcement of book worth attention.
Keywords: language origins, anthropology, humans
Message-ID: <1991Apr2.204906.9048@lgc.com>
Date: 2 Apr 91 20:49:06 GMT
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I recommend attention to

	1990.	Bickerton, Derek.  Language & Species.
		The University of Chicago Press.

Derek Bickerton, a respected linguistic anthropologist,
exhibits his professional maturity in grappling with the
big questions on the origin of human language.  The last
decade has witnessed a number of readable works, all of
them the products of intellectual passion by men and women
of the just-post-Margaret-Mead-and-Louis-Leakey (say)
generation.  Each has taken risks in synthesizing material
from a range of disciplines, each has crystallized a few
key ideas into memorable hypotheses, and each has presented
those hypotheses as remarkably productive in explaining the
human condition.  Bickerton's work fits this description.

I paraphrase his key claim:  language didn't come to our
ancestors so that they could communicate; it was so that
they could understand--internally represent--their world
better, and thus live more fruitfully.  The book explores
the evidences and consequences of this hypothesis.

Is there interest in these newsgroups in discussing these
issues?  I expect that the anthropologic journals have
already reviewed *Language & ...*, but I haven't been
able to browse them for many months.  I'll note that many
(particularly, in my experience, those of European
training), dismiss this sort of broad treatment as mere
mythologizing.  Bickerton has organized his work well,
though (including a useful Index), and my guess is that
at least some of his formulations will stick, that is,
will become commonplaces of received wisdom.
--

Cameron Laird				USA 713-579-4613
cl@lgc.com (cl%lgc.com@uunet.uu.net)	USA 713-996-8546