Because The Dawn of Language by Sverker Johanssen is so good that there is no room for a full review of it, nor to sufficiently praise the admirable work of translator Frank Perry, in the three paragraph slot they give us here. But we can tell you why you ought to read it, because for us it’s a masterclass in how to write a non-fiction book. Ready?
Deals with the big questions: and they don’t come much bigger, nor harder to solve than the origins of language, which has perplexed us ever since some reporter on the Jericho Times first broke the story of a building collapse somewhere near Babel
Simple accessible style: how many so called great books do you have to put down because reading them becomes a tiresome chore? Go on, admit it. But Johanssen is nice and light, without ever falling into the trap of facetious triviality; which leads us to:
Introduces all the big concepts: everything you need to know is here: Noam Chomsksy, AI models, fossil finds, ethology, anatomy, Nim Chimpsky, linguistic theory all served up with the necessary humility: there are no leaps to huge conclusions or daring Grand Theories. Which allows him to:
Take an entertaining risk: Using every element carefully taken from the well-verified studies of animals (bees, apes etc)he dares to suggest what the communication patterns of Homo erectus might have been like, for a small group on one brief cool afternoon in China, perhaps around one million years BC. We say might, because the author is careful to label his passage as speculation.
There’s something here for everyone: Every sentence is carefully constructed upon a well-signalled framework of learning from every necessary field, So even if you get fed up with language, you might want to dive down one of his well-signposted rabbit holes to neural networks, for example. There are plenty like that. We spent an hour googling videos showing different types of animals looking at themselves in mirrors. So, learning becomes a pleasure, not a burden. Every teacher’s dream. If we had five stars, we’d give this one six.
The Dawn of Language; How we came to talk by Sverker Johannsen , translated by Frank Perry Maclehouse Press 2021
#language #linguistics #human evolution #human #ape #dolphin
Learning, Science and Society 