Bickerton, D. (1990). Language and Species. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.

Reviewed by Susan W. Finlayson for English 721

August, 7, 2001

The Continuity Paradox (Chapter One)

Two ways in which evolution can produce novel elements: (1) by the recombination of existing genes in the course of normal breeding, or (2) by mutations that affect genes directly. Absolute novelties are impossible because there must already exist genetic data capable of being altered, to a greater or lesser extent. Language cannot be without antecedents of some kind. Language must have evolved out of some prior system, and yet there does not seem to be any such system out of which it could have evolved (7-8).

THE GULF BETWEEN LANGUAGE AND ANIMAL COMMUNICATION

Animal communication is neither recombinant nor analyzable. Animal calls convey a single affective meaning about the immediate environment. However, animal calls are evidence of not only a communication system but also a representational system. Vervet monkey calls, for instance, convey not simply generalized alarm, but warnings of specific predators: snakes, leopards, and eagles. Vervets display a Primary Representational System by which they select from the available sensory information only what it is useful for their species to know and process that information in stimulus-response manner.

Origins of Representational Systems (Chapter Four)

Step One: Cells evolve that are responsive to features in the environment (i. e. sensory perception).

Step Two: Cells that respond to the environment differentiate from cells that control motor action.

Step Three: Varied information from sensory cells trigger varied motor behaviors (e. g. Vervet monkeys)

Step Four, the Final Step to Language: Intermediate cells between sensory and motor cells begin to function as information processors, merging and synthesizing ouputs of other cells.

“With the more advanced primates we have arrived at a stage immediately antecedent to that of language [Stage Three]…Since language is primarily a representational system, its antecedents are to be found not in primitive communication systems but rather in the means by which earlier and simpler species represented to themselves the universe they inhabited” (100).

The Fossils of Language (Chapter Five)

Two possible scenarios for progressing to Step Four:

1. Language sprang out full-blown in its entire complexity (not , likely).

2. Language emerged originally in a more primitive form, a protolanguage (more likely, consistent with the mechanism of evolution).

Four types of “fossil” evidence for the existence of a protolanguage:

1. Language of children under two years (+/-).

2. Language of trained apes.

3. Language of adults deprived of language experience in their early years (e. g. Genie).

4. Pidgin Languages.

These manifestations of language have the following characteristics in common: (1) words are assembled in associative strings, not according to syntactic principles, usually 2-4 words per string; (2) absence of function words like articles, prepositions, complementizers, markers of tense and aspect; (3) presence of meaning-rich function words like a negative, a conjunction (and), quantifiers (many), auxiliaries for possibility (can) and obligation (must), and question word(s).

From Protolanguage to Language (Chapter Seven)

Two possible scenarios for progressing from protolanguage in homo erectus to language in homo sapiens:

1. Gradualist: Language evolved through many intervening stages.

2. Catastrophic: Language originated with a single event, presumably a mutation of some kind, affecting a single female in Africa (according to some accounts) between 140 and 290 Kya. The descendents of this female began, not later than 70 Kya, to radiate from their original habitat and by 30 Kya had spread throughout the Old World and perhaps (although this is still controversial) throughout the New World too (165).

Two types of evidence for the rapid development of language with no intervening changes.

1. Language of children at 2 years and 6 months (+/-).

2. Nativization of Pidgin languages (Creoles) in a single generation.

These developments have the following characteristics in common: (1) grammatical items; (2) systematic expansion of structure into phrases and clauses; (3)obligatory expression of subcategorized arguments; (4) automatic identification of null elements.

Other synchronous developments: bladed tools, cave paintings, stone figurines, moon calendars. “Early artifacts were used for doing simple pratical tasks like chopping up carcasses. Later artifacts were used in a wider range of ways, including for ornamental and symbolic purposes…” (173).

Mind, Consciousness, Knowledge (Chapter Eight)

Language constitutes a Secondary Representational System. “A sense impression is no longer the only means by which thought processes can be initiated. Thinking can be triggered by linguistic input from the SRS” (199), enabling constructional learning (the assembling of previously acquired information), self-awareness, and the framing of propositions.

“Only language could have broken the prison of immediate experience in which every other creature is locked, releasing us into the infinite freedoms of space and time…. It is language, and language alone, that makes it possible for us to dream of a world of peace, freedom, and justice, where we might live in harmony with that nature of which, after all, we form only a dependent part.” (256)