The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language Reviews

• Everybody's Talking

  
  By A3FDBBQ0NK2SSO on 2007-08-13
  More than anything else, I came away from The First Word thinking that linguists love to argue. In fact, every few pages I found myself arguing with author Christine Kenneally and I'm not even a linguist. I disagreed with much of the book and wanted more evidence for many of her arguments. But when I find myself thinking about a book this much and discussing it with people at length, I have to give it five stars.
  
  The subject is the origin of human language. How did it start? Obviously there's no way of knowing, but that doesn't (nor should it) keep linguists from looking for the answer. Since no one can prove or disprove any of the theories about language origin, it's a free-for-all. Linguists seem to enjoy knocking their colleagues' theories even more than they enjoy defending their own theories.
  
  Kenneally is mostly even-handed in her presentation of the many interesting theories currently in debate. However, she chides Martin Gardner for a 1980 article he wrote debunking experiments claiming to have taught chimps, apes, and dolphins human language. Gardner acknowledged the popularity of such experiments, especially when they featured an attractive blonde scientist teaching an ape (evoking Beauty and the Beast) to "talk." Kenneally suspects that no one writes of Chomsky or other male scientists by describing their hair or appearance. Yet Kenneally thinks nothing of mentioning Steven Pinker's "flop of curls" or that Stephen Jay Gould is "short and remarkably loud."
  
  Many of the theories about language origin seem to rest on isolated cases. Linguists cite the case of Genie, a girl who was raised by people who didn't speak to her. She didn't learn to speak and when she was removed from the abusive environment as a teenager, she couldn't learn to speak. It is difficult to draw valid conclusions from a few psychologically scarred individuals.
  
  Kenneally is a linguist and also a journalist, so she is able to condense and present these complex ideas to people who have no background in linguistics but who are interested in it anyway. Sometimes the going gets a little tough, but there are some amusing asides to ease the way, such as the story of what happened when two gorillas who had learned sign language got together and had a sign language shouting match.
  
  It's obvious that there's a lot more that we don't know about language origin and less that we do know. Only twenty or thirty years ago anthropologists were listing the attributes that make us human. Opposable thumbs, using tools, making tools, language, self-awareness. Point by point, evidence has shown that we are not unique, at least not in the ways we had defined ourselves. The same thing has happened with our arguments for why we speak but other animals don't: the descended larynx, the bigger brain, more complex thoughts, a greater need to communicate. Maybe we should stop trying to teach dolphins and apes to use human language and try to communicate with dolphins and apes in their language. We might learn something.
  
  In any case The First Word is a great introduction and a tidy summary of the debate on language origin as it stands today. But read it soon because the evidence and theories are bound to change quickly.
  
  

• A slap on the face for those who fight over language "supremacy"

  
  By A3ADQE9F6RWKCZ on 2007-07-27
  
  What a fascinating idea for a book! Kenneally, with her simple, witty, journalistic style approach, explores the evolution of language in a manner even a layperson could grasp and enjoy. The book's flow and wittiness will appeal to anyone interested in knowing how our ancestors even started to say the basic words of our languages, wherever they came from.
  
  My biggest "take away" from this book is how we, humans, genetically evolved as a special group of species, with an ability to "speak" and communicate with each other, have thrown ourselves into a conflict zone filled with hatred and racism that is sometimes closely related to language.
  
  In India, States that speak different "languages" clash over water, land and even movies and movie stars. An outsider will have a hard time differentiating the thirty odd languages that are spoken in different parts of India, but each one of them consider themselves "superior" compared to their counterparts, and stereotype and ridicule each other, politically, and socially . When you closely monitor their linguistic style, it's pretty clear that all of them evolved from very similar sources marvelously described by Kenneally.
  
  In Sri Lanka, there is a civil war that is being fought, purely on "linguistic" basis between two groups that speak different languages. Again, when you research, there may not be many differences between those languages as lucidly explained by Kenneally.
  
  If you enjoyed Jared Diamond's works, you will sure like this one. Guaranteed.
  
  N.Sivakumar
  Author of:
  
  America Misunderstood: What a Second Bush Victory Meant to the Rest of the World
  
  

• Evolution vs. Innate Capability

  
  By A1LKSZ9CYJ6829 on 2007-08-18
  As the title suggests, this book does not lay out a theory for the origins of language. It is a solid effort to capture the debate between linguistics and many other branches of science concerning the origin and development of language, more specifically human language. It is a highly controversial subject with great disagreements among many well known scientists, which is well captured by the author, a linguist as well as a journalist.
  
  Noam Chomsky, longtime professor of linguistics at MIT, has been the giant of linguistic studies. It is his theories that are the starting point for the origins, even the definition, of language. But as the author shows, his basic view that humans possess a highly localized center of the brain that emerged due to some form of genetic mutation fairly complete in its ability for language is now largely unaccepted by a preponderance of the scientific community. Instead, language is seen to be a part of a general capability to communicate and has been evolving for millions of years with some periods more significant than others, in particular one about 200,000 years ago.
  
  The Chomskian emphasis on language syntax has given way to the evolution of practical communication including the importance of gestures as a forerunner to spoken language. A variety of injuries and surgeries to the brain have discredited the notion that the center of language is located in a particular area of the brain. Perhaps most important are a number of studies that clearly demonstrate that animals have highly effective understanding and communication abilities that exist outside the bounds of Chomskian formalities, though admittedly at far less than human levels.
  
  The book in attempting to thoroughly cover the debate runs into the problem of detail saturation with clear understanding and continuity of the argument sacrificed. Perhaps that is inevitable because there is no overriding theory on which to hang the various positions taken. The book is a nice introduction to the subject of language definition and origin.
  
  
  

• Interesting, but heavy slogging.

  
  By A2R8TQ9OYNAQTO on 2007-12-29
  "The First Word", Christine Kenneally's "search for the origins of language" comes with its share of celebrity endorsements. The back cover contains laudatory blurbs from both Steven Pinker ("a clear and splendidly written account ...") and author of "The Ghost Map", Steven Johnson, ("a rare and delightful mix..."). Then there is the following gem on the inside jacket cover - "The First Word is not only a compelling historical account of our greatest intellectual faculty but a provocative consideration of what it means, finally, to be human".
  
  Well, it seems hardly fair to hold an author accountable for whatever silliness her publishers might assemble on a book's exterior in the interest of boosting sales. Let's just say that this book is ambitious in its scope and that the author is obviously academically well-qualified. My own formal qualifications in the field of linguistics are non-existent, so this review is from the point of view of a non-specialist with a keen amateur interest in the topic.
  
  An obvious question: `is this a book for the non-specialist?' I think that the publishers would like to market it as such, and that Dr. Kenneally possibly thinks of it that way. But, much as I wanted to like this book, if it is meant to be accessible to the general reader, I think it falls well short of the mark. This is not to say it's not interesting - there are parts which I found fascinating. But it gives the distinct impression that the author did not have a well-defined audience in mind, or - if she meant it to be accessible to the general reader - she has not mastered the ability to write effectively for a non-specialist audience.
  
  The problems manifest themselves in two main areas. First, the question of scope and organization. There is a definite sense that the author wants this to be a totally comprehensive account of the current state of knowledge. This is fine, but ultimately greatly increases the indigestibility of the book. The book's structure is unwieldy to the point where one wonders whether Viking actually had an editor read it. A "prelude", followed by an "introduction", leading in to a "prologue"? What were they thinking??? The sixteen chapters of the book follow an equally awkward organizational structure. Four are devoted to specific linguists (Chomsky, Pinker & Bloom...). Seven discuss specific features of human language, such as words and syntax, but are clumsily titled. For example, grouped under the blanket heading "If you have human language..." are the "chapters"
  * You have something to talk about
  * You have words
  * You have gestures
  * You have a human brain
  The next three chapters are grouped under the heading "What evolves?", and are titled
  * Species evolve
  * Culture evolves
  * Why things evolve
  That the author finds it necessary to remind us that a human brain is a prerequisite for human language, or does not appear to recognize that "why things evolve" does not answer the question "what evolves?" are, of course, minor details. Nonetheless, these potentially distracting irritants could have been avoided, given a little more aggressive intervention by a professional editor.
  
  The second major problem area - and it's a serious one - is in the author's style. It would be wrong of me to slam it completely here, there are paragraphs which I found delightful:
  
  "Even though humans are more closely related to vervets than vervets are to chickens, it appears that vervets and chickens have converged upon a common tactic for survival. The forces that led them both to this strategy are powerful, but alarm calls were probably not bequeathed to them from a common ancestor. In fact, the most important thing that they share with all the other alarm-call-making animals is that they are small and delicious. Fitch explained: `The things that have alarm calls are little tiny guys who get eaten by lots of things, and the common ancestor of chimps and humans wasn't in that category. Humans don't have alarm calls, and apes don't have alarm calls. It's not that they don't have threats, but they don't have all these different threats where it pays to be able to refer very rapidly to aerial threat versus ground threat. Whether you're the Snickers bar of the Sahara or the Snickers bar of South Dakota, you're going to evolve alarm calls'".
  
  Similarly, the opening `Prelude' to the book is a fluid, evocative tribute to the power, mystery, and magic of human language. Unfortunately, for every paragraph that soars, there are three that amount to nothing more than plodding, indescribably dry accounts of X's 2006 findings about gesturing in bonobos being a partial refutation of Y's 2004 study in vervets. We get it, Dr Kenneally, you know your stuff. What you haven't figured out how to do is to winnow through the assembled evidence and shape it into a reasonable narrative. Laying everything out there for the reader to sift through to find meaning is certainly one strategy for writing a book, but this is not the approach that makes the writing of your colleague Steven Pinker both edifying and fun to read. To reach a broader audience, an author needs to do better than this:
  
  "The entropy level indicates the complexity of a signal, or how much information it might hold, such as the frequency of elements within the signal and the ability to make a prediction about what will come next in the signal, based on what has come before. Human languages are approximately ninth-order entropy, which means that if you had a nine-word (or shorter) sequence from, say, English, you would have a chance of guessing what might come next. If the sequence is ten words or more, you'll have no chance of guessing the next word correctly."
  
  There are several problems with this paragraph. The second sentence is so vague as to be effectively meaningless ("a chance of guessing what might come next" - given even a random guess has some finite chance of being right, how big a chance are we talking about?). There's the unilluminating, apparently unnecessary insertion of `say, English'. But the real problem is that the combination of the second and third sentences don't really make any obvious sense. They certainly don't explain the concept of ninth-order entropy in an intelligible manner.
  
  Another example. Early in Chapter 9, there is this sentence:
  
  "Until very recently it was believed only we could understand or deploy any of the structural devices found in human syntax, but Kanzi showed that this is not entirely the case."
  
  Sounds like Kanzi is an investigator in the field, and one proceeds, expecting to hear about the details of Kanzi's study. Well, no, it turns out that Kanzi is a bonobo we learned about in Chapter 2, with an amazing capacity for language. Clearly, Dr. Kenneally expects us to have remembered this. The problem is that the book is full of test animals across the spectrum, from bonobos to dolphins to crows to parrots, many of whom are introduced by name. The reader can be forgiven for not remembering that Betty is the tool-fashioning crow, not to be confused with Alex, the garrulous parrot (or his buddies Griffin and Arthur) or Elodie, the flirtatious elephant. Again, this may seem like a minor quibble, but it is indicative of the repeated failure of Dr Kenneally to be able to put herself in the place of a reader unfamiliar with the material being explained.
  
  What is disappointing about these examples, and ultimately about the work as a whole, is the sense that, with stricter editing, this could have been a really fascinating book. As it is, it is an interesting book, but one which is very uneven, requiring the reader to slog through some fairly tedious, unilluminating material to find the good bits, written for the most part in a style which makes little concession to the non-expert.
  
  Despite these reservations, I enjoyed the book. I think it doubtful that it will reach as wide an audience as does, for example, the work of Steven Pinker.
  
  
  

• An Impressive Suite

  
  By A1VX6VPXNQTNUP on 2007-10-17
  The development of our incredible ability to make meanings out scribbles on a rock or a page remains a stunning evolutionary leap. This book is a wonderful outline of some of the factors that went into the development of language. It is also full of interesting insights into the disputes between some of the major experts in the field.
  
  Christine Kenneally is a linguist who writes about language for the genera public, and here she stresses the importance of looking at language as a set of abilities, many of which we share with other species. An important key to language, and one that has lead to sometimes fractious debates, is to understand where these abilities overlap with and diverge from those found in species like chimpanzees, monkeys and dolphins. Abstract language may be uniquely human, but most of the neurological machinery that it uses has been present in other species for millions of years.
  
  Christine takes us on a journey through gesture and imitation and the evidence that they were important in the development of speech and language. She takes in the whole debate about whether or not speech is the medium of communication with others, while language exists only for communication with ourselves, or whether language and speech are inextricably linked. We learn about the syntax of anima vocalizations and the discovery of FOXP2, a gene of profound importance to the development of human language.
  
  Although I have been interested in language for three decades, and thought that I knew quite a lot about it, I finished this book feeling re-energized.
  
  After I closed the book I looked again at the title, "The First Word," and marveled at the extraordinary suite of cognitive abilities that enabled me to take those three words, decode them, link them to other thoughts, images and memories, before finally extracting their meaning.
  
  That sequence is in itself quite remarkable. It is even more so when we realize that the sophisticated system that we use every day has likely only existed for a few tens of thousands of years.
  
  Christine is an excellent writer who not only understands the issues but can also communicate them with a rare lightness of touch.
  
  
  Highly recommended
  
  
  Richard G. Petty, MD, author of Healing, Meaning and Purpose: The Magical Power of the Emerging Laws of Life
  
  
• intellectual giants: a cautionary tale
  By A21SO8V8FFUI8E on 2007-09-05
  Personally, it has always (at least since I started to get the hang of evolutionary theory) seemed pretty obvious that the ability for language must have evolved, along with all our (and other life forms) capabilities and features. It came as a shock, therefore, to discover that the topic had been formally 'banned' in 1866 by the Societe de Linguistique of Paris, and had remained in disrepute for well over a century. Kenneally tells of her own initial encounter with this attitude in the early 1990s in Linguistics 101 at the University of Melbourne. After asking the lecturer about the origin of language, he replied: "linguists don't explore this topic: we don't ask the question because there is no definitive way to answer it"!
  
  It seems that much of this attitude in the second half of the 20th century came about because Noam Chomsky - one of the 'intellectual giants' in linguistics - had this opinion, and his opinions tended to dominate a great deal of academic discussion (although to be fair, they did at times generate considerable controversy). Kenneally quotes a story from Paul Bloom: "... A linguistics friend of mine told me in all seriousness about what he called the C-principle. The idea is that if Chomsky believes something, then it makes sense to agree with him in the absence of other knowledge. Because, you know, he is a really smart guy."
  
  On the evolutionary side, Stephen Jay Gould apparently also held the view that "the human species was a glorious accident". Naturally, this included human language. The prominence of these two individuals made it difficult for serious research to get started.
  
  In recent years, Chomsky himself has published on the topic of language evolution. In many ways, The First Word is the story of how this came about, and the stories of the key researchers who made the idea of the evolution of language 'academically respectable'.
  
  It is a complex topic, weaving together a great many threads. Kenneally pulls it all together by focusing on different 'capability platforms' (speech, gesture, and so on) and the ways in which they can be seen to have evolved through different species over evolutionary timescales.
  
  I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and learned a great deal from it. If I had a criticism it would be that it doesn't explore how language evolution has accelerated in the last 10,000 years or so (aided by cultural mechanisms). However, that is something that would probably require a whole book in its own right, and is arguably beyond the scope of 'The First Word'.
  
  All in all, it really shows that no matter how smart someone is, or how great their reputation, they can still be dead wrong about really major questions. Highly recommended!
  
  
• Did you know that?
  By A3FUS60Q5ICKFW on 2007-09-10
  I bought this book after hearing the end of a review on the radio someplace, and thought it would be fun to have it on my bookshelf next to "The Last Word" (a celebration of unusual lives edited by Marvin Seigal). I thought it would be tracing the evolution of languages - from Indo-European, etc. Instead, it's about the evolution of language itself, from animal to man, from gestures to words. It covers the history of the science of linguistics, and almost makes Noam Chomsky intelligble. It's full of those passages that cause me to nudge my wife and say, "did you know that... ?"
  
  
• Highly Recommended
  By AK8LVV3QIG6SL on 2007-12-11
  
  The First Word is a very well written (as one would expect from a PhD in linguistics from the University of Cambridge), yet conversational review of the search for evidence of the evolution of human language. The author makes it clear that she is an evolutionist, but also makes it clear that researchers have taken two steps forward in understanding how language has evolved but, at the same time, research has moved us three steps backward. For example, some evidence has turned up of rudimentary structural abilities in animals but, at the same, evidence has also been gathering that animals are unable to use other fundamental grammar rules essential to human language (page 164). As the excellent review in the January 2008 American Scientist concluded, the past two decades have seen a deluge of books and conferences on the evolution of language, and this book does an admirable job of summarizing this research. The conclusions of this research, as Kenneally documents, is the current reality is the field of the evolution of language is in a state of chaos. It is almost universality agreed that language (but not communicating) is a uniquely human ability and, I would add from reading this a few other books on this topic, that the enormous gap between human language and the communication systems used by animals has grown larger as a result of this deluge of research. I agree with MIT professor Noam Chomsky that no evidence exists for language evolution and, furthermore, the problem is so difficult that one cannot know how language evolved. Kenneally did not use these words, but that is the guarded conclusion of her book. And my conclusion is the deluge of research has shown that human language did not, and could not, have evolved. Nonetheless the research will continue, and I encourage it to continue because we are learning much about biology and language from it. Kenneally divided up her book into specific topics, such as she has one chapter (9) on syntax (word order) and uses an excellent but simple example to explain its importance on page 155. Even though clearly an evolutionist, this book is a gold mine for Intelligent Design advocates and one area they need to explore related to their theory.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Comprehensive view of how language may havedeveloped
  By A3PMNYJ3FL2YQU on 2007-11-29
  Kenneally suggests answers questions we didn't even know to pose: why do we speak? Why don't other animals? What do we convey? Are we hard-wired for speech, or did speech happen by mistake? The author has extensive -- very extensive -- knowledge of the history of linguistic research, the Chomsky wars, biological/evolutionary research and development, neurology and neurobiology and neuropsychology, philosophy, and history -- but she wears her learning lightly, creating a highly readable book whose complexity you hardly notice until you've finished. A thoroughly enjoyable and instructive read.
  
  
• difficult read; don't try to read on vacation (as I did)
  By A1SL3FST3MCBF8 on 2008-06-16
  this was a tough read; I had to force myself to pick it up each time; tough read while on vacation (and I'm a neurologist interested in language...)
  
  
• The Search is the Thing
  By A2U0XHQB7MMH0E on 2008-06-20
  The key word in the title of this book is "search." No one knows much about the evolution of the capacity for language in humans, and even the current state of the capacity is the subject of fundamental debate. Kenneally is best at describing the history and sociology of the conflicting parties to the debate. In the process, the reader will learn a good deal about the structure of the human brain, the nature of adaptation in evolutionary theory, the physiology of sound production, the relationship between communication in animals and humans, and several other basic facets of human biology and behavior. This is a great book for someone who has not studied these issues in the past decade or two.
  
  The reader will also learn that we don't know much about the issue, and the intense parti pris attitudes of the researchers in this area are an inverse reflection of their level of firm knowledge.
  
  Kenneally has a knack for making really hard issues (such as generative grammar) seem really easy to understand, and for making clear the basic contrasting positions in the evolutionary theory of language. The book is a pleasure to read. On the other hand, these issues are in fact quite difficult, and some of the beauty in the study of language comes from intrinsically difficult theoretical issues in linguistic theory and game theory. Indeed, game theory, which supplies the basics of signaling theory, supplies basic insights that are missing from this book. Also missing are accounts from behavioral ecology and bio-anthropology on the relationship between social organization and brain size, a subject which I consider a basic background for the study of the evolution of language. Finally, humans are special in that we cooperate in large groups of unrelated individuals, a subject with a voluminous literature that Kenneally ignores. Yet, language is first and foremost a prerequisite and central element in the capacity of humans to cooperate. The notion that one could model the evolution of language while abstracting from these issues in not plausible. However, the book is a great read, and would have to be four times as long to fulfill my wish list, so I recommend it as a nice place to start.
  
  
• Oversell
  By A3C2NFTXGCSLY0 on 2007-09-10
  More about Noam Chomsky than you need to know. Read Pinker's How the Mind Works instead.
  
  
• YOU'RE DOING IT NOW
  By A231K716D7POU3 on 2007-11-27
  A thoughtfully assembled and compelling book that surveys the evolving range of ideas about language -- without using the word "communication" too often. Not surprisingly the human sense of superiority, as it relies on language, is further and rightfully debunked by the author's meticulous review of the theories of language as its possible origins and evolution are traced from the almost creationist sounding "language organ" theories of Chomsky to the more subtle and physiologically founded theories of Pinker, all made accessible by Kenneally's keenly sequenced and objective assessments.
  
  Especially sad for a book on language are the scattered and persistent typos. In some spots sentences have been suddenly terminated -- a type of error that has grown more and more popular with the advent of word processing -- and in other passages unintentional word substitutions have been made. My favorite example occurs during a discussion of mirror genes. As if the second lower case "r" actually did mirror its predecessor and was then superimposed upon it, "mirror gene" suddenly becomes "minor gene". Another nit is the cover design which riffs on the cliché visual representation of evolution, a conception which Kenneally correctly debunks in her book.
  
  Lo, packaging!
  
  But these nits are aimed squarely at the publisher, not at the author. Perhaps as the science of proofreading improves -- while that of language and its origin and evolution progress -- we can look forward to a revised edition.
  
  
• Serendipitous reading
  By A39WKQ8RDV5H5 on 2008-04-15
  I expected to learn about various theories on the origins of language, but the book does not contain much on this subject. Instead, it introduces the environment in which such theories may flourish, and it does it very well : the author has a great talent for writing about science and scientists, and this suffices to make the book an interesting reading.
  As for the origins od language, I'll have to continue to rely on "The Singing Neanderthals" by Steven Mithen, and chapter 8 of Jackendoff's "Foundations of language".
  
  
  
  
• Not the last word
  By A3OKM42Z1MM37Z on 2007-10-01
  I enjoyed this book - a great range of anecdotes and examples that helped me to understand much about language that I had not known of before.
  
  
• origins of language
  By A2U1SXUT0CDNIL on 2007-10-31
  I was hoping for more---it's mainly linguistics. But the descriptions of the Chomsky/antiChomsky controversies, and the language of apes, are interesting.
  
  
• Some good ideas
  By A3N10W4T5GBPR2 on 2008-01-15
  This book contains a few good ideas, but spends more time than I want discussing the personalities and politics that have been involved in the field.
  It presents some good arguments against the "big bang" theory of the origin of human language (which suggests that one mutation may have created syntactic abilities that don't correspond to anything in other species), mainly by presenting evidence that human language is not a monolithic feature, and that most aspects of it resemble features which can be seen in other species. For example, some of our syntactic ability involves reusing parts of the brain that provide motor control.
  I'm uncertain whether the "big bang" theory she argues against is actually believed by any serious scholar, because those who may have advocated it haven't articulated much of a theory (partly because they think there's too little evidence to say much about the origin of language).
  The most valuable idea I got from the book was the possibility that the development of human language may have been a byproduct of a sophisticated theory of mind. Other apes seem to get less benefit from communications because with only the limited theory of mind that a typical chimp has, there's little that improved communication by one individual can do to increase cooperation between individuals.
  
  
• Nontechnical overview emphasizing debates between scientists.
  By A10GUZ8JS6HGT1 on 2008-02-24
  This book is as much about scientific debate as it is about the study of the origins of language. Noam Chomsky is a big player in her story. You learn a lot about how scientists gradually overcame their reluctance to study a topic that had once been deemed to be outside the scope of science. I would have liked to learn a bit more technical detail; in some sections it seemed as if the author thought readers might not want to take the effort to understand difficult concepts.
  
  
• Very Informative and Approachable
  By A1MUUTF4Z9503V on 2008-08-01
  I thought this was a very fair and balanced approach to the biological and social history behind the development of human language. Though it does not draw any particular conclusions, it presents the reader with several well researched expert opinions on the subject and makes heavy use of science as backup. I am sure it wasn't the absolute authority on the subject of evolutionary linguistics, and there may well be some issues with the book, but I thought it was a great and approachable read for those of us with no background in the actual science of linguistics.
  
  
• An overview of the discussion
  By A388TU8E2PA8Z8 on 2008-10-21
  If you're looking for details on the various schools of thought for the origins of language, go to the sources - Chomsky, Pinker, et al. Several of the reviewers here thought that's what this was (or should have been), but as one remarked, it would have to have been four times longer than it was.
  
  The First Word is not a technical deep dive; it is an overview of the debate, and as such mirrors many of the biases in the debate. For example, much is said about how Noam Chomsky had (and in many respects still does) dominated the field as its creator, and similarly the book - unwittingly or not - comes back to Chomsky time and again.
  
  The First Word is a decent read, but not one that made me want to go check out a tome by Chomsky (or others) from the library. As a neophyte to the entire subject (aside from the odd TV special about ape sign language), I found Kenneally's treatment to be the right level of detail for me, and found the ideas and story of the debate to be moderately interesting. I suppose this suggests the book was successful in what it wanted to accomplish and warrants a higher rating than the 3 stars I've given it, but...
  
  

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