REVIEWS 741

The nature and origin of language. By Denis Bouchard. (Studies in the evolution
of language 18.) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. xiii, 385. ISBN
9780199681631. $46.96.
Reviewed by Kristin Melum Eide, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Denis Bouchard has been at the center of linguistic theorizing for more than three decades, and
unlike many other forceful critics of the generative enterprise, B has always kept on top of every
important ongoing development of this research program, offered substantial and useful modifi-
cations, made seemingly radical suggestions (later to be adhered to by the mainstream), and
pointed out ill-conceived notions and conceptual flaws in the current consensus. Thus one does
well to listen when this author publishes a new book.
As suggested by the series title, the main topic of the book is on how language may have
evolved in the human species, but as B points out, ‘before we can assume anything about how
language emerged in humans, we have to determine what language is, and what those properties
of language are whose origin we are trying to account for’ (7). Thus, a central concern is to advo-
cate a different view on how the crucial properties of language should be characterized. Rather
than putting emphasis on the formal apparatus describing the computational system, B advocates
the view that all relevant properties of language follow from what Chomsky (2005) refers to as
‘third factor’ principles, that is, in B’s words, the design properties of the conceptual and percep-
tual properties of signs. This eliminates ‘the need to postulate an innate, language-specific set of
conditions—Universal Grammar (UG), this residue of unexplained properties—thus finishing
business that remains problematic in current generative theorizing’ (xiii). That means that there is
no UG—which is a good thing, since UG is what remains to be explained in a theory of language,
and even more so in a theory to explain the emergence of language.
B thoroughly discusses and mostly dismisses a range of recent and more classical works ap-
proaching the evolution of language (like recent publications by Marc Hauser, Noam Chomsky,
and W. Tecumseh Fitch; Steven Pinker and Ray Jackendoff; William Calvin and Derek Bicker-
ton; Bickerton; James Hurford; and Chomsky). In his own approach to the emergence of lan-
guage, B arms himself with the recent discovery of so-called offline brain systems: ‘a system of
neurons that can be activated in absentia: the individual does not have to see or hear an action for
these neuronal systems to be activated. These Offline Brain Systems (OBS) are triggered by rep-
resentations of events instead of the events themselves, and produce representations of events
with no brain-external realization’ (107). These systems of neurons give rise to a range of proper-
ties (a cluster of characteristics dubbed ‘the human-specific adaptive suite’, encompassing cogni-
tive, neurological, physiological, and behavioral traits), unique to humans, whereof language is
but one aspect. Thus, language or, more specifically, the emergence of signs in the human brain is
a by-product of an underlying change, an emergence of a particular type of neurons in the human
brain. This change was not due to a rewiring of the brain that installed some kind of language-
specific apparatus in our minds, since these OBS neurons have many different functions and ef-
fects besides language.
The book consists of a short introduction plus four parts partitioned into ten chapters. Part 1,
‘The emergence of language’, sets the scene for the central inquiries and outlines recent ap-
proaches (see above). Two broad approaches are particularly relevant: language is culturally
evolved in response to communicative necessities, or language is biologically and genetically in-
scribed in the human brain. Here B quotes Tooby and Cosmides (1990:762) that ‘[i]t is magical
thinking to believe that the “need” to solve a problem automatically endows one with the equip-
ment to solve it’, and he sees ‘form before function’ as a premise in the discussion, since ‘our an-
cestors had to have the capacity to form Saussurean signs before they could use them for any
communicative function’ (15). B discusses these previous theories thoroughly and then concludes
this discussion with his diagnosis that all of these approaches lack an approximately correct the-
ory of what language is; this prevents them from answering the basic questions about the origin
of language (60). Thus, B sets out to set the records straight as to what language actually is. This
is the topic of Part 2, ‘What is language that it could have evolved?’.

Printed with the permission of Kristin Melum Eide. © 2015.

742 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 91, NUMBER 3 (2015)

Against Chomsky’s principles of efficient computation, treated in the generative paradigm as

important and self-evident guiding lines logically prior to the study of language, B objects that
computational efficiency is not a known feature of biological systems (Ch. 2). Instead, he wants
to search in the sensi-motor (SM) and conceptual-intentional (CI) interfaces for the relevant con-
straints observed by human language. And he finds these constraints in the Saussurean sign.
A confessed neo-Saussurean (74), and using Saussure as the all-important fundament of his
theory, B presents his own sign theory of language in Ch. 3. An important principle here is
compositionality, and according to B, this principle has methodological value only if we exclude
all covert elements from the theory. Language consists in words (U(nit)-signs) and morphol-
ogy/syntax (C(ombinatorial)-signs). Unlike in mainstream generative theories, there is no sharp
distinction between these two types of signs. C-signs may take the perceptual form only of a jux-
taposition or a superimposition of a vocal (or gestural) percept, a limitation on the combinatorial
signifiants due to properties of the human sensi-motor systems (95–96). The semantics of the
C-sign is always predication, used here to cover both subject-predicate, topic-comment, and
saturation (e.g. a noun phrase as the complement of a preposition or a verb; p. 90).
Part 3, ‘The origin of language: From neurons to signs’ (Chs. 4–7), outlines a number of recent
theories on the continuity problem, on how the available systems of neurons may have adapted
from their previous uses (with comparable uses in other primates) to take on a role in communi-
cation. B is skeptical of continuity hypotheses since they seek ‘continuity at the functional be-
havioral level’ (105), using selection pressures as an explanation, whereas one should ask instead
how human neurological structures differ from those of other primates, how these structures have
plausibly emerged in humans, and how they make human brains ready for language (Ch. 4). Chs.
5 and 6 revolve around the emergence of linguistic signs, and the evolution of syntax and mor-
phology, whereas Ch. 7 concentrates on the protolanguage hypothesis, that is, the idea that there
must or may have existed a phase in the emergence of human language characterized by the pres-
ence of words, but with no syntax (e.g. Calvin and Bickerton).
In Part 4, ‘Explaining the properties of language’ (Chs. 8–10), the author argues (Ch. 8) that the
minimalist program struggles with its failure to come to terms with the constraints that the SM
and CI interfaces place on (narrow) syntax, since this has no effect on the actual analyses put
forth for various grammatical phenomena. Instead, the framework continues to propose
epicyclic-like analyses to save the assumptions. Thus, refusing to take in the fact that semantic
features play an important part in the Merge operation forces the theory to introduce instead un-
interpretable features, ‘stipulative’ assumptions that ‘add to the cost of the theory’ (223). B quotes
Koster (2009:84) for the claim that this is no progress from Chomsky 1965, since Merge essen-
tially functions like a phrase structure rule: lexical items have features that say what kind of ele-
ment they take as a sister. For the features of the phonological interface, the role of interface
features in a derivation is also far from clear:
The computational system deals with all the features of the objects in the first phase in which they enter
the derivation, but then their interface features are temporarily forgotten, not carried along … . After it
has ‘forgotten’ the interface features, the system must be able to retrieve this material later in the deriva-
tion to provide a complete surface string for a sentence. It is rather unclear what it means for a feature to
be in limbo for part of the derivation, and how this really restricts the functioning of the system, since the
features are nevertheless kept in this obscure storage facility. (224)

Ch. 9 deals with structure dependence in human language, and B attempts to show how struc-
tural dependencies, binding, bounding, wanna-contraction, and long-distance dependencies can
be resolved within his own sign theory of language (STL). Of particular importance is the restric-
tion against covert elements and semantically empty elements; this means, for example, that ex-
pletives must have a semantic contribution (section 9.3.1) and that traces cannot exist (section
9.3.2). As B admits, his own proposals can account for only some of the central cases, whereas ‘a
complete resolution of all UG arguments would require hundreds of additional pages’, but what
B offers is nevertheless ‘a new starting point’ (332). The five-page-long Ch. 10 sums up B’s
major assumptions.
In my view, this is an important book. It is well written, well structured, and thought-provoking,
and it should be accessible to a wider audience. I would not hesitate to recommend this book to stu-
 REVIEWS 743

dents even at undergraduate levels. It is characteristic of the book that it is not just concerned with
linguistic modeling and theory, but also draws on a wide variety of sources, from genetics, psy-
cholinguistics, neurobiology, anthropology, archeology, art, music, language acquisition, paleoan-
thropology, comparative biology, research into animal call systems, and experiments of teaching
language to apes.
One of B’s definitive strengths is that he expresses himself so eloquently; another is that he is
very knowledgeable about the generative theory and that he can refer to the relevant statements
by Chomsky or any other proponent of the generative enterprise at any point to underpin his crit-
icism. His overview of the theoretical developments is impressive, making the criticism so much
more effective than it would have been otherwise. It is one of the framework’s own experts who
here raises his voice. Many readers will benefit from the historical overviews on crucial con-
structs of the generative theory, whether one agrees with B’s approach or not. And the issues he
raises go right to the heart of the theory.
His own accounts of the chosen phenomena come across as a bit more sketchy, in my opinion.
Although the arguments and data concerning long-distance dependencies may be convincing
enough, there is clearly much more to be said about things like the left branch condition and the
function of tense and deixis in human language. One may also—somewhat rightfully—accuse B
of using certain notions that are poorly defined and explained; for example, his portmanteau ef-
fect (308) is used to explain certain differences between English and French, but is not in itself
sufficiently explained, and it is also not clear that it derives from anything else—except maybe
the arbitrariness of signs. But this principle is described in too hasty a manner to have much ex-
planatory value as it stands in this context. Nevertheless, these minor objections do not subtract
from the pleasure of reading this thought-provoking book.
Although B is critical, he is in no way dismissive about what the generative enterprise has con-
tributed to the field of linguistics, as he clearly acknowledges that the observations he discusses
are in great part, ‘if not entirely, due to the remarkable work of generativists’ (318). However,
‘putting the emphasis on the computational system made [the framework] discover important
properties, but this overly formal bias is what prevents it from moving beyond repeatedly listing
the facts by means of novel forms of diacritics, as we see in its culmination in cartography’ (318).
B clearly sees his own research program, the STL, as the natural continuance of the generative
enterprise: ‘The way out of this cycle is to appeal to the properties of the substances that underlie
language. The STL program makes essential use of the perceptual and conceptual substances of
language to motivate its theoretical primitives. The result is that the observations make sense and
follow from undisputable primitives’ (318).

REFERENCES
Chomsky, Noam. 1965. Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Chomsky, Noam. 2005. Three factors in language design. Linguistic Inquiry 36.1–22.
Koster, Jan. 2009. Ceaseless, unpredictable creativity: Language as technology. Biolinguistics 3.61–92.
Tooby, John, and Leda Cosmides. 1990. Toward an adaptionist psycholinguistics. Behavioral and Brain
Sciences 13.4.760–63.

Department of Language and Literature

Norwegian University of Science and Technology
NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway
[[email protected]]

Mouth actions in sign languages: An empirical study of Irish Sign Language. By Su-
sanne Mohr. (Sign languages and Deaf communities 3.) Boston: De Gruyter Mou-
ton, 2014. Pp. xviii, 231. ISBN 9781614514978. $140 (Hb).
Reviewed by Richard Bank, Radboud University Nijmegen
While the hands are the most important articulators in signed languages, there is a lot of mouth
activity when deaf signers sign among each other. This has been shown and studied for many sign

Printed with the permission of Richard Bank. © 2015.