How the Brain Evolved Language (review)

This book leads the reader on an interesting journey through various fields tangential to linguistics. Evolutionary biology, neurobiology, psychology, computer science, mathematics, and philosophy all come into play at some point in this work, and it is clear that Donald Loritz attempts a definitive redirection of linguistic thought. Much of his previous work focused on artificially intelligent computerized language learning systems. This new book poses the basic question of whether one can establish ‘a theory of how human language, which functions to serve our minute-by-minute social adaptation, arose as part of the same adaptive, evolutionary process which led to Homo loquens’ (16). In answering this question, he takes an innovative approach to explaining how the brain evolved language. His continuation of the biological principles of evolution and adaptation into language processes leads ultimately to a unifying theory behind linguistics, which he christens ‘adaptive grammar’, in order ‘to give my critics a convenient target’ (16).

Considering the broad scope this work is meant to have, it is no surprise that L does not blurt out all the secrets of adaptive grammar from the book’s onset. He begins with a chapter on the ideas of history’s great thinkers about the role of the brain. All of these ideas he promptly debunks. The remaining first half of the book is spent addressing elementary biological principles of life and how evolution endowed the human brain with certain unique characteristics. In the second half, L addresses particular brain functions responsible for speech and communication. He then relates these to linguistic knowledge and ties both to his general theory of ‘adaptive grammar’.

To those more intrigued by the humanistic aspects of linguistics, this book may present somewhat of a challenge. But for the linguist who has long wondered how any discussion of the ‘language acquisition device’ in the brain need not include such words as ‘neuron’ and ‘synapse’, L’s book is indeed informative. For all of the book’s seeming complexity, most of the discussion of brain function and anatomy is reduced and refined to increase its readability, and the resulting relevance to linguistics becomes clear. The book is further made coherent by L’s readable style and generously applied sense of humor (e.g. his assertion that humans may well be nothing more than a neuron’s way of producing other neurons.)

L appears to have answered the question he posed at the beginning of his work: Adaptive grammar unifies the daily adaptation of humans to our changing language environment with the adaptation over eons of those creatures which eventually evolved into us. Grammar is not only explained, but it is also elevated to a construct which contributes to human survival. This work is guaranteed to call into question the foundations of modern linguistic theory.