The First Word: The Search For The Origins Of Language

摘要

In 1866, the Linguistic Society of Paris famously banned all discussion of the origins of language, and The London Philological Society followed suit in 1872. The ban was remarkably effective, and it was not until a century later that tentative discussion began to re-emerge. Reluctance to address the issue may have been reinforced by the influence of Noam Chomsky (1975: 59), who wrote that 'it would be a serious error to suppose that all properties, or the interesting structures that evolved, can be "explained" in terms of natural selection'. Pinker and Bloom (1990) challenged this view, arguing strongly that there was really no option but to consider language as the outcome of natural selection. Their paper opened the floodgates, and the last 15 years have seen a torrent of books, articles and conferences on the topic.