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  • Doctor Dolittle’s delusion: Animals and the uniqueness of human language by Stephen R. Anderson
  • Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy
Doctor Dolittle’s delusion: Animals and the uniqueness of human language. By Stephen R. Anderson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Pp. xii, 355. ISBN 0300103395. $20.90.

Among scholars in disciplines that impinge on linguistics (psychology, animal communication studies, neuroscience), linguists are often seen in a poor light, as defenders of an arrogant ‘speciesist’ view of language and of human beings in general. The same attitude comes across among some journalists, eager for stories about mastery of ‘language’ by chimpanzees, dolphins, German shepherds, or whatever. Linguists who deny that, for example, the communicative achievements of Kanzi the bonobo (Savage-Rumbaugh & Lewin 1994) count as ‘language’ are scolded for moving the goalposts, on the ground that precisely similar behavior would be counted as ‘linguistic’ if manifested by human children. This hostile attitude often goes along with skepticism toward the Chomskyan view that the brain has an innate capacity specific to the learning (or rather the growth) of language. It also goes along with dislike for the ‘rationalist’ approach to language championed by Noam Chomsky in Cartesian linguistics (2002) and preference for ‘empiricist’ approaches.

Anderson sets out to counter this hostility through extended comparison of human language and animal communication, at a level that will appeal to the general reader as well as to the specialist. This book is thus aimed at a wide audience similar to that of Steven Pinker’s The language instinct (1994). Will A be similarly successful? I think he has a good chance. A is one of the best writers of English prose working in linguistics today, and he manages to present complex issues without either oversimplifying or patronizing the reader. He makes excellent use of diagrams and illustrations (for example, showing the formant structures of speech sounds and bird calls, the vocal and auditory apparatus of various species, Deaf sign language, and brain regions associated with birdsong). It is always hard for an academic to gauge whether a popular presentation such as this one will hit the right note, but I will be surprised if A fails.

Linguists can learn much from the book too. Few of us are so well informed as A is about the relevant capacities of other species. After a brief introduction, A discusses in Ch. 2 Charles Hockett’s (1960) ‘design features of language’. Ch. 3 demonstrates how modest the cognitive underpinnings are for the seemingly impressive achievements of Clever Hans, the horse that could ‘count’, and of plovers that can ‘fake’ a broken wing; then, by way of contrast, A gently introduces linguistically naive readers to the unexpected cognitive complexities of syntax. The next several chapters discuss how communication operates in species that are progressively closer to humans. Ch. 4 deals with the ‘language’ of bee dancing. Ch. 5 introduces phonology by comparing spectrograms of human speech and of bullfrogs’ croaks. Ch. 6 presents more spectrograms, this time of birdsong, for the purpose of comparing innate and environmental factors in the vocal maturation of birds and humans. In Ch. 7 A introduces primates in the wild: lemurs, monkeys, and apes. In Ch. 8 we return for a heavier dose of syntax. A makes the point that, for animals really to ‘have’ language, it must be demonstrated that they have human-like syntactic capabilities—which he argues in Ch. 10 that they lack. The intervening Ch. 9 deals with Deaf sign language. Finally in Ch. 11 A discusses language evolution, drawing mainly on the work of Derek Bickerton, Pinker, and Ray Jackendoff.

A’s book is particularly timely for linguists. Recent developments make it important for us to become better informed about the topics that he covers. Many readers of Language will be aware of Hauser et al. 2002, in which Chomsky and the two animal communication experts Marc Hauser and Tecumseh Fitch consider what is specifically human about language. Probably most of us, if asked before 2002 what in language (or at least I-language) was in Chomsky’s opinion shared with other animal species, would have been inclined to answer: ‘Nothing at all’. A more appropriate answer now...

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