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Taken from Issue No. 52

CONTENTS

• Book Review 1
• Book Review 2

BOOK REVIEW 1
by David Deterding

The Seeds of Speech: Language Origin and Evolution. Jean Aitchison. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996 (Canto Edition 2000), 282 pp.

At the start of this lively and authoritative overview of recent findings on the origins and evolution of language, Aitchison admits (p.15) that this area "has long been a disreputable study", and in the past it has attracted some truly wacky speculation. One star performer mentioned in this respect (p.4) is a certain James Burnett Lord Monboddo who in 1773 wrote a book claiming that, just as humans learned how to spin and weave from spiders and how to build dams from beavers, we learned how to sing and speak from birds; and apparently, in the early twentieth century, even the otherwise well-respected Otto Jesperson was not above groundless guesswork in hypothesizing that early speech was something between the nocturnal mating calls of cats and the song of nightingales (p.102).

So how do we know that today's seemingly erudite research on the origins of language will not similarly be ridiculed as baseless speculation by future generations? Aitchison suggests that language probably originated about 100,000 years ago in the arid plains of East Africa after the formation of the Great Rift Valley cut our ancestors off from the lush forests of West Africa, but will this claim one day evoke guffaws of hilarious derision?

Actually this seems unlikely, as Aitchison introduces all kinds of solid evidence, ranging from archeological research to DNA profiling, and this has established a substantial foundation for modern theories on the origins of language. Furthermore, investigations on the developments currently taking place in pidgins and creoles such as Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea provide many valuable clues about the process of language evolution.

There are, of course, many competing theories about both the origin and evolution of language, and Aitchison takes great pains to present and explain them in clear, non-specialist language. To this end, she delights in the use of analogies to illustrate the different hypotheses, so that on page 13 she introduces an amoeba to illustrate the idea language was originally simple and then became progressively elaborated, and then she uses spaghetti junction (a complicated road intersection near Birmingham in England) to illustrate the opposing view that various alternative routes were open for the development of language until speakers tended to choose one set of options rather than another. On the following page, she uses the rabbit-out-of-a-hat image to illustrate the possibility that language emerged quite suddenly, and then she further develops this idea with the Roman myth of Minerva springing forth from the head of Jupiter. Sometimes the multiple analogies can get a bit overwhelming, but they certainly keep the text lively and entertaining, and on the whole they are highly successful in explaining complicated opposing viewpoints in a very accessible manner.

Occasionally, the effort to keep the text accessible for a non-specialist readership can lead to a frustrating omission of details. For example, we are told twice (p. 141 & 151) that the word i in Tok Pisin in such a sentence as the following is an "untranslatable particle":

Surely the meaning of this particle could have been explained? Presumably Aitchison has decided that such explanation is an irrelevant detail and so has skipped over it to prevent it interfering with the smooth flow of the text. And on page 146 we are told that that the creoles described by Derek Bickerton "may not have developed as suddenly as he assumes" - I would really like to have learned a bit more about this.

In connection with the effort to keep the text suitable for non-specialists, and presumably consistent with the rationale from Cambridge University Press for the popularisation of books such as this in a Canto edition, all references have been relegated to end-notes. While this may succeed in avoiding the cluttering up of the clear presentation of the text, I found myself constantly flipping to the back of the book to look up these end-notes, and this can get really irritating. Surely incorporating the occasional reference into the text can't interfere that severely with its readability? And when we spend so much time and effort trying to persuade our students to use proper referencing in their assignments, I just wish that Cambridge University Press would help by encouraging its authors to follow suit.

But these are minor quibbles. Aitchison has written a delightfully entertaining and exceptionally informative book that is certain to become a widely-read authority on how language started out and developed into the complex system that we know today.

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BOOK REVIEW 2
by David Deterding

The English Languages. Tom MacArthur. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, 247 pp.

Traditionalists will probably be alarmed just by the title of this book, suggesting as it does that there is no single English language but a whole host of alternative varieties; and indeed, McArthur does document in some detail the vast array of different versions of English that are now found throughout the world. However, the existence of these varieties is a fact, so there is no point in adopting an ostrich-like approach and trying to pretend that the English used in Britain, America, Australia, India, Nigeria, and Singapore does not have substantial differences. This book provides a fascinating discussion of the emergence and status of these different languages.

Although McArthur does not deny the value of a standard for English, he clearly maintains an enduring affection for his native dialect, Scots, which seems to differ from standard British English probably about as much as Singapore Colloquial English ("Singlish") differs from standard English. As an illustration of Scots, he gives (p.7) an excerpt from Mark's Gospel:

Sae they wan atowre the Loch tae the kintra o the Gerasenes.

the equivalent of which, in modern English, is:

So they came to the country of the Gerasenes on the other side of the lake.

Clearly, although Scots is related to (standard) English, few people outside the Lowlands of Scotland would understand it. This illustrates a point that is sometimes missed in Singapore, where it is often assumed that Singaporeans are at a disadvantage in having to master standard English after initially learning to speak a non-standard colloquial variety. While it is true that the learning of two different varieties of English may indeed present a linguistic burden, it is actually no different from the situation for the vast majority of people in Britain, where only a tiny proportion of the population grow up speaking with a standard RP accent.

The fear among many people is that the proliferation of so many different varieties of English around the world will result in its break-up into a multitude of mutually incomprehensible languages, just as Latin, the unifying language that was once spoken throughout the Roman Empire, eventually broke up into Italian, French, and Spanish. McArthur discusses this Latin analogy at length, and he quotes (p.182-3) Henry Sweet's prediction at the end of the nineteenth century that, within a hundred years, the people of England and America would be speaking mutually unintelligible languages. Well, that has not happened, and it seems increasingly unlikely that it will ever happen. As McArthur points out, the analogy with Latin is almost certainly no longer valid, because recent advances in technology with films, television, telephone, and more recently the Internet have facilitated a massive increase in fast and easy global communication.

With regard to the differences between British and American English, it might be instructive for us to compare words associated with the motor-car against those used with computers. The car was invented at the start of the 1990's, and there are considerable differences in usage between Britain and America, including bonnet/hood, boot/trunk, windscreen/windshield, and petrol/gasoline. In contrast, for the computer, which has only more recently become a household appliance, there are hardly any such differences, as hardware, software, mouse, and modem are all common to both British and American English. So it seems that, far from becoming separate languages, these two varieties of English may actually be becoming more similar.

Although the fears of a linguistic fragmentation for English may be unfounded, it is still certainly true that the adoption of a standard for use in schools remains a controversial topic, not just in Singapore but throughout the world. McArthur devotes most of one chapter to a discussion of the furore that erupted when, in December 1996, the Oakland School Board in California tried to classify Ebonics as a separate language, in an attempt to acknowledge that many among the local African-American population were struggling to grasp standard English and would therefore benefit from additional funding to deal with their "foreign" home language. Perhaps it can be reassuring to teachers in Singapore grappling with similar issues of how to deal with a non-standard local variety of English that this problem exists elsewhere, and the heat of the debate is no less intense in "native" English speaking countries such as the USA.

Though McArthur does not try to provide answers to these issues, he provides a wealth of fascinating information that can certainly inform us and may reassure us that the problems encountered in Singapore are found in many other countries. Furthermore, this highly readable book might help to improve the standard of the debate by providing us with solid background knowledge.

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