The First Word

Lane Greene This is a book about words and language and evolution. Christine Kenneally, the author, starts off by describing how, surprisingly enough, this subject was completely ignored by linguistics for a really long time. One of the big official international linguistic bodies in the late 19th century banned all study of the topic, saying that it was unknowable. Even when most intellectuals accepted evolution was a fact, they figured it was too hard to figure out whether language itself had evolved. Then she tells the 20th century story of how Noam Chomsky basically sighed and shrugged his shoulders... (Source)