The origins of language: A slim guide by James R. Hurford (review)

The Oxford University Press ‘Slim guides’ are intended ‘to be non-technical, readable, and short, while still conveying what is unique and special about language and its continuity with non-human life’ (from the front matter). James R. Hurford is uniquely placed to produce such a guide on the topic of language origins. He wrote one of the first linguistically informed articles on the topic (Hurford 1989) and has recently published two mammoth volumes covering the origins and evolution of linguistic meaning and grammar (Hurford 2007, 2012, respectively). I doubt that there is any other living scholar (with the possible exception of Derek Bickerton) who combines the breadth of knowledge of language evolution studies with the ability to synthesize complex, often contradictory, material into a readable package for the lay reader.¹ The degree to which H has succeeded is exemplified by the glowing testimonials (on the inside cover of the book) by four scholars whose approaches to language differ markedly from each other: Cedric Boeckx, N. J. Enfield, Tecumseh Fitch, and Maggie Tallerman. Boeckx has phrased his evaluation in a manner that I could not hope to surpass: ‘Hurford has written a delightful little book, an ideal point of entry into the range of complex issues facing anyone that wants to understand how human language evolved. Darwin himself would have cherished this guide’. In this review I outline the chapters and then turn to some general issues that occurred to me while reading the book.

Ch. 1 of The origins of language (TOOL), ‘The prehistory of a very special ape’, traces what is known about the nature (physical and cognitive) of the hominid species ancestral to and contemporaneous with Homo sapiens, along with discussion of their geographical placement and migration patterns. Of particular interest are the arguments for not identifying the origins of art with the origins of language. The first chapter of TOOL introduces a recurrent theme of the book, namely that, contrary to claims ‘that the human language capacity arose abruptly, … a more plausible alternative, considering the way in which evolution usually works, is that there was some degree of gradualness in the evolutionary process’ (16–17).

Ch. 2, ‘Nature, nurture, and language’, begins with a discussion of the FOXP2 gene, which serves as a prelude to a general discussion of the interaction of biological and cultural mechanisms in human evolution. TOOL takes a strong stand against the idea (associated with Noam Chomsky and others) that language arose in the species as a mechanism for enabling ‘private thought’ instead of for enabling and enhancing communication. The last part of the chapter discusses computer modeling of the evolution of language (one of H’s areas of specialization) and in particular models illustrating how language might have arisen gradually.

Ch. 3, ‘How trusted talk started’, discusses the evolutionary antecedents of human communication and how language might have come to play a central role in the creation and maintenance of social structures. A wide range of topics are discussed, including dyadic and triadic communication, ontogenetic ritualization, joint attention, and reciprocal altruism. Special attention is paid to the latter, given that clear examples of reciprocal altruism in nonhuman groups are rare. In fact, language helps to enable this very human trait: ‘The naturalness of altruism to close kin is extended to artificially maintained groups by language’ (57).

Ch. 4, ‘Concepts before language’, traces the evolution of concepts, from very primitive organisms to humans. Various steps along the journey include the development of representations that are detached from external stimuli, episodic memory, and displaced reference. While ‘many non-human animals have quite richly structured information in their heads about the world around them[, … o]nly humans have developed rich systems for externalizing this information in the form of public messages’ (73).

Ch. 5, ‘We begin to speak, and to hear differently’, focuses on the origins of the physical apparatus involved in speech and in hearing (and interpreting) speech sounds. While the...