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Product Description
内容説明
A compelling look at the quest for the origins of human language from an accomplished linguist
Language is a distinctly human gift. However, because it leaves no permanent trace, its evolution has long been a mystery, and it is only in the last fifteen years that we have begun to understand how language came into being.
The First Word is the compelling story of the quest for the origins of human language. The book follows two intertwined narratives. The first is an account of how language developedhow the random and layered processes of evolution wound together to produce a talking animal: us. The second addresses why scientists are at last able to explore the subject. For more than a hundred years, language evolution was considered a scientific taboo. Kenneally focuses on figures like Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker, along with cognitive scientists, biologists, geneticists, and animal researchers, in order to answer the fundamental question: Is language a uniquely human phenomenon?
The First Word is the first book of its kind written for a general audience. Sure to appeal to fans of Steven Pinkers The Language Instinct and Jared Diamonds Guns, Germs, and Steel, Kenneallys book is set to join them as a seminal account of human history.
Language is a distinctly human gift. However, because it leaves no permanent trace, its evolution has long been a mystery, and it is only in the last fifteen years that we have begun to understand how language came into being.
The First Word is the compelling story of the quest for the origins of human language. The book follows two intertwined narratives. The first is an account of how language developedhow the random and layered processes of evolution wound together to produce a talking animal: us. The second addresses why scientists are at last able to explore the subject. For more than a hundred years, language evolution was considered a scientific taboo. Kenneally focuses on figures like Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker, along with cognitive scientists, biologists, geneticists, and animal researchers, in order to answer the fundamental question: Is language a uniquely human phenomenon?
The First Word is the first book of its kind written for a general audience. Sure to appeal to fans of Steven Pinkers The Language Instinct and Jared Diamonds Guns, Germs, and Steel, Kenneallys book is set to join them as a seminal account of human history.
From Publishers Weekly
This book grows out of Kenneally's conviction that investigating the evolution of language is a good and worthwhile pursuit—a stance that most in the field of linguistics disparaged until about 20 years ago. The result is a book that is as much about evolutionary biology as it is about linguistics. We read about work with chimpanzees, bonobos, parrots and even robots that are being programmed to develop language evolutionarily. Kenneally, who has written about language, science and culture for the New Yorker and Discover among others, has a breezily journalistic style that is occasionally witty but more often pragmatic, as she tries to distill academic and scientific discourses into terms the casual reader will understand. She introduces the major players in the field of linguistics and behavioral studies—Noam Chomsky, Steven Pinker, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Philip Lieberman—as well as countless other anthropologists, biologists and linguists. Kenneally's insistence upon seeing human capacity for speech on an evolutionary continuum of communication that includes all other animal species provides a respite from ideological declamations about human supremacy, but the book will appeal mainly to those who are drawn to the nuts and bolts of scientific inquiry into language. (July 23)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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