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panireads's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
4.25
Very interesting insights in what languages are and how they emerged . Sometimes a bit heavy but worth it
maria_rb's review against another edition
3.0
While this author provides an alternate explanation to that of Chomsky’s Universal Grammar (UG) assertions, the evidence he provides to dispute UG is to merely state that he is correct and other scientists are wrong. While he provides cultural scenarios that he deems likely to have happened with Homo Erectus, in particular, he doesn’t quite make the link from cultural necessity to language invention clear beyond: if they needed to work together to complete more complex tasks, such as building boats to travel vast distances , they’d have needed language, so therefore they invented language that later evolved to what is currently what we use. That isn’t convincing enough to me.
He does have some very good explanations for how evolution is likely to have happened, but all of this is predicated on a theory that he is right and others are wrong, without making a case for why he’s right.
The fact that he simply dismisses ALL of the linguistic work of earlier scientists for his own theories comes across as shortsighted to me in that his explanation for dismissing it all isn’t clear. He simply starts with a premise that his theories are correct and others’ theories are not. That’s bad science and bad academic reasoning. I do appreciate that he is positing a new theory, but wish he’d done more to connect the dots to come across as more credible.
He does have some very good explanations for how evolution is likely to have happened, but all of this is predicated on a theory that he is right and others are wrong, without making a case for why he’s right.
The fact that he simply dismisses ALL of the linguistic work of earlier scientists for his own theories comes across as shortsighted to me in that his explanation for dismissing it all isn’t clear. He simply starts with a premise that his theories are correct and others’ theories are not. That’s bad science and bad academic reasoning. I do appreciate that he is positing a new theory, but wish he’d done more to connect the dots to come across as more credible.
nzagalo's review against another edition
4.0
Começar por dizer que não sou de Linguística, embora trabalhe no domínio da Comunicação que opera alguns níveis acima na relação com o humano, e por isso possui relação com o conhecimento produzido pela linguística. Dizer que tendemos a conhecer mais Chomsky pelo seu ativismo político do que propriamente pelos seus contributos científicos. No entanto, tendo em conta a envergadura do seu reconhecimento é sempre complicado defender posições antagónicas, contudo, é isso que Daniel L. Everett faz neste livro, “How Language Began: The Story of Humanity's Greatest Invention” (2017). Everett doutorou-se com uma tese em linguística, baseada no seu trabalho de campo com tribos da Amazónia nos anos 1970, um trabalho que continuou sempre a evoluir e lhe permitiu chegar a esta afirmação que surpreende muitos linguistas: “Eu nego aqui que a linguagem seja um instinto de qualquer tipo, assim como nego também que seja inata”.
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Para quem tiver interesse no tema, o texto continua no blog:
https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com/2019/08/como-comecou-linguagem-historia-da.html
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Para quem tiver interesse no tema, o texto continua no blog:
https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com/2019/08/como-comecou-linguagem-historia-da.html
dayvyjones's review against another edition
3.0
How Language Began was a pleasant read, although I'll say it's not my favorite area of linguistics. Daniel L. Everett is a fantastic, and certainly brilliant author. Some of this book did drag for me, but I appreciate Everett's appreciation for where humans came from.
loki_io_23's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
2.75
vicivia's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced