The brain is still not massively modular for language

 And thus, Noam Chomsky is still wrong.

But, that's about all you'll learn from Steven Mithen's new book. Actually, if you, like me, knew the former a decade or more ago, you're not even "learning" that.

The Language Puzzle: Piecing Together the Six-Million-Year Story of How Words Evolved by Steven Mithen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Maybe a 2.5, but I just can't round up it up.

First, the subhed isn't true, or not fully. To use British English, the conclusion chapter is a damp squib. (There is no "the answer" on the origin of language ability. Any body who has claimed so in the past is lying; and, anybody who claims so in the next 20 years, minimum, will also be lying, IMO.)

That wouldn't be so bad, the "big reveal" not really existing, if Mithen had moved the ball forward in some ways with an incomplete answer, either in the conclusion or earlier in the book.

He doesn't.

Chomsky's massive modularity of the brain being dead? That's been known for years, and accepted by about everybody other than bitter-end Ev Psychers. Within the world of linguistics and language evolution, Michael Corballis said so seven years ago, in his much better book — extended review of it with the Chomsky angle, based not just on his book, is here. Indeed, Corballis hoists Chomsky by his own petard.

A "soft" version of Sapir-Whorf being true? Yes, but that's also been known for some time, if we keep the emphasis on "soft," as I've discussed in brief. However, Mithen appears to go beyond a soft version.

Take page 139. Here, he claims in English that many words signifying slowness begin with "cr": that is "creep," "crawl" and others. Took me 30 seconds to think of the "sl" word of "sleek" and "slalom." True, the second is a modern formation off a skiing-specific term, but that's how new words develop.

Side note: There's a moderate to moderately-high, but not extremely high, level of anecdotalism in this book.

On S-W, there is the one good idea, supported by some research, that it is right-eye dominant, with language control being in the left hemisphere the cause. BUT! He has no studies on people for whom language areas in their brain are distributed across both hemispheres, which Mithen says earlier is not uncommon.

Back to the conclusion. I doubt his claims that Homo erectus was using so-called "iconic" words as early as 1.6 million years ago. Even if they did, outside of Africa, such proto-languages went nowhere anyway, and thus are evolutionary dead ends. Also, even if they were using such words, it was only as a proto-language and not an actual language. Maybe proto-proto-language is more exact.

(Side note: Mithen is basically "hominid evolution 101," as far as modern understanding of the hominid family bush's development. There's no deep dives here, whether connected to linguistics or not.)

Conclusion gets worse. Mithen claims that H. heidelbergensis was using words for specific minerals, spears and other implements, etc, by 200,000 years ago. Evidence? None. Because there isn't any, and won't be. At this point, even without a "big reveal," we're starting to get into territory critiqued and criticized by Stefanos Geroulanos in "The Invention of Prehistory." Related to that, I think Mithen may have a semi-saltationist mindset for language development stages as well as its alleged earliness. Read Corballis for other angles.

Also, and also noted by a few other reviewers, the book is highly digressive. Lots of it is about the evolution of words within modern languages, etc., and has basically nothing to do with the evolution of language per se.

Finally? An issue that reared its head in the introduction, but is not unique to Mithen.

That is an essentially axiomatic exclusion of cetaceans from having developed language. No proof is ever offered; just an assumption is made.

Yes, I know that it's harder to study orcas and dolphins, than primates, in the few places where humans still enclose them in cells, and that it's a lot harder to study them, and humpback and other whales, in the wild. But, studied they have been. See Wiki's page on animal language for more. Even if cetacean communication, whether a proto-language or less than that, would not fall in line with human evolution, it could still provide discussion for linguistic development in general, and the philosophy thereof. 

Corballis also falls short on this issue.

Update: These researchers say the laryngeal theory of speech origins is yesterday's news. Via other pieces at PopSci, other ideas of Mithen also appear to be less than firm.

View all my reviews