Professor Botha's new book...

[Alexander Gross]

Forgive me if you have already received the following announcement for Professor Botha's new book.  I am honored to have been included among the first group of scholars who received it.  It is preceded by some of my own reactions to the announcement.

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I'm truly pleased to hear Professor Botha feels that much work in the "evolution of language" is not sufficiently "restrictive" and lacks a scientific basis.  During the winter and autumn of 2000 I advanced this view a bit differently in a paper presented in New York and Mexico City:

http://language.home.sprynet.com/trandex/hermes.htm#totop

(If it's too long to read, search for the word "conjecture.")

I can only wish that Professor Botha had been equally concerned with the scientific underpinnings of much linguistic theory in one of his earlier works, as I point out in the 41st segment of the following piece:

http://language.home.sprynet.com/lingdex/chomrong.htm#totop

Finally, I believe that language studies in general continue to suffer from the failings I have outlined in "Suggested Minimal Requirements for the Advanced Study of Linguistics" at:

http://language.home.sprynet.com/lingdex/minimum.htm#totop

What is truly needed within the parameters of balanced scientific research is a more inclusive approach, not a more restrictive one, nor can the cramped and dated shibboleths of syntactic structure ever hope to account for the rich physiological and biological underpinnings of language. Questions concerning the origins of language may perhaps be best answered by those language professionals who today still perform a task analogous to the one they performed in prehistoric times.

Respectfully,
Alexander Gross

The announcement for the book follows.  If you go to the URL it provides, you will be able to read the book's Preamble and a fair amount more about it.

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Dear Colleague
Please find attached a description of Rudolf Botha's new book on language genesis, Unravelling the Evolution of Language, published by Elsevier in 2003.
Further information, including the Preamble of the book, can be viewed at the following URL:
<http://www.elsevier.com/inca/publications/store/6/8/0/8/3/1/index.htt> 
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