The recursive mind: the origins of human lancuace. thought and civilization.

摘要

Michael Corballis has written a delightful book that makes an important contribution to our understanding of the emergence of our unique capacity to communicate using a verbal generative language. His central theme is that our thought processes are recursive, and that this has led to the recursive nature of our verbal language, and hence its generative nature as first identified by Noam Chomsky. To his credit, Corballis does not buy into the entire Chomsky narrative - namely the notion that language suddenly appeared in homo sapiens due to a 'somewhat miraculous' and 'singular event' in one individual, whom Chomsky named Prometheus. Rather, Corballis suggests that language arose through natural selection, evolving into its present form through many twists and turns. He also has much to say about the evolution of our species.