Book Review: Evolingo, or Evolutionary Psychology Meets Linguistics

Abstract

Reviews the book, "The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language" by Christine Kenneally (2007). in this book, the author describes the history and current state of the enterprise for a general audience. The task she has undertaken-describing to nonscientists the several highly technical fields that address this topic-is formidable. the author does it very well, clearly supported by both her skills as a free-lance journalist and her Ph.D. training in linguistics. The first four chapters of the book focus on four researchers or research teams who have staked out different positions on the issue. The position that the author assumes in this book is probably the most widely-held view in the field-that the human capacity for language is made up of multiple abilities, each with its own evolutionary history. The central components of what the author refers to as "the language suite" are the social-cognitive capacity to have communicative intentions, the capacity for reference, and the capacity to produce and interpret structured sequences. This book is readable, interesting, and well represents the field of evolutionary linguistics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)