Deacon's Symbolic Species

[Dick Hudson]

A few weeks ago I asked on this list for views on Terrence Deacon's book
`The Symbolic Species', and references to reviews. Apart from Lachlan
Mackenzie, I don't think anyone replied directly to the list, but several
people wrote to me directly, agreeing with my view that it's a very
important book and/or offering references to reviews. Several asked me to
summarise back to the list, so here goes.

Here's my list of reviews, which make very good reading. I've looked up nearly
all of them so I may as well add a few words on each as a guide. They're
all basically enthusiastic except Poeppel, so I won't keep on repeating
this; I'll just mention the points they criticise.

Jim Hurford, in Times Literary Supplement
http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~jim/reviews.html  or
http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~oliphant/lec/publications.
  := discussion of symbol, index and icon.

Robin Lakoff, in Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/reviews/symbolicspe
cies.htm
  := a bit hard to read.

William Calvin, in NY Times Book Review
http://WilliamCalvin.com/1990s/1997DeaconBkRevNYT.htm or
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/08/10/reviews/970810.10calvint.html
  := No serious complaint

Ralph Holloway, in American Scientist
  No url recorded, but I found it by searching for Terrence Deacon
  := con Deacon, human prefrontal lobes aren't in fact larger than those of
chimps.

Mark Turner, in Bostonia, Spring 1998.1, 72-3
http://www.wam.umd.edu/~mturn/WWW/deacon.html
  := no complaint

Robert Berwick in the Los Angeles Times, Sunday, September 7,1997.
 (I haven't read this one.)

David Poeppel, in Nature 388:734, 1997.
  := Very unenthusiastic. Deacon's idea is mere speculation, in contrast
with the Chomskyan idea. He classifies Deacon as (a) simply anti-innatist
and (b) tied to general learning and development mechanisms; but both
classifications are wrong. Deacon just (c) objects to the idea that there's
an innate module for grammar. He claims:
(a) that we are innately endowed for learning symbols,
(b) that `language is not processed by some general learning capacity, but
by quite heterogeneous cognitive subsystems' (p. 298)
(c) that `although our brains and sensorimotor abilities exhibit many
adaptations for language that together might be called an instinct,
grammatical knowledge cannot be one of them.' (p. 328)


 ==============================================================================
Richard (=Dick) Hudson
Department of Phonetics and Linguistics,
University College London,
Gower Street,
London WC1E 6BT
work phone: +171 419 3152; work fax: +171 383 4108
email: dick at ling.ucl.ac.uk
web-sites:
  home page = http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/home.htm
  unpublished papers available by ftp = ....uk/home/dick/papers.htm