Communication breakdown

It all started the night Tom Wolfe was up late, bathing his eyeballs in the glow of a multimillion-pixel screen—web surfing, in other words—when he happened upon a long article in Frontiers of Psychology, dated May 7, 2014. As he read, he felt his mind boggling. “The Mystery of Language Evolution,” an essay signed by eight scientists, all prominent linguists, anthropologists, biologists, and computer scientists, was an announcement of failure! After 40 years, the prominent scientists could find no convincing evidence for their cherished theories about where human language came from.

They didn’t quite say, “We give up,” but in almost 8,000 words they detailed four areas where scientific inquiry ran into a ditch or dead end: (1) no discernible link between nonhuman animal communication and the fundamentally different human kind; (2) no help from fossils or archaeology; (3) ditto genetics; and (4) no verifiable tests from which to draw logical hypotheses. In conclusion, “Based on the current state of evidence, we submit that the most fundamental questions about the origins and evolution of our linguistic capacity remain as mysterious as ever, with considerable uncertainty about the discovery of either relevant or conclusive evidence that can adjudicate among the many open hypotheses.”

Tom Wolfe couldn’t get the article out of his mind, meaning he had to write a book about it. In The Kingdom of Speech he has tons of fun with evolutionary justifications for language (and for everything else), as well as the two men who supplied the theory with its mechanism of natural selection. Wolfe regales the reader with details about Charles Darwin’s digestive problems and Alfred Russel Wallace’s loser qualities before suggesting his own answer to the riddle of speech. In return, critics have sneered at Wolfe’s unscientific background (he’s a mere journalist!—who uses too many exclamation marks!) and his overly facile “solution” to the mystery.

Language is more than words, an obvious fact evolutionists often overlook. It’s a logos, a logical platform for reasoning and creating.

But critics aren’t able to address the main points his book actually makes. First, the capacity for speech is the one thing that raised the puny, naked, clawless-and-fangless biped called man to be master of all he surveys. Second, this capacity is fundamentally different from all other forms of animal communication, not only in degree but in kind. Third, no satisfactory scientific explanation exists for how humans acquired it.

Of the “eight failures,” as Wolfe labels the authors of the article that started it all, one name stands out: Noam Chomsky, who is so famous even my spell-checker recognizes him. Though best known, perhaps, for his anti-American, anti-war protests, Chomsky made his reputation as a linguist and originator of the universal grammar theory. His big idea was that children are born with an understanding of basic grammatical structure, allowing them to quickly pick up on the speech patterns they hear. Chomsky went so far as to suggest a physical “grammar organ” in the brain, which no one has been able to find.

His theory reigned supreme for at least 40 years, but field research has been eating away at it. Apparently Chomsky’s fatal mistake was trying to apply the basic patterns of European languages across the global spectrum, but obscure tongues that don’t apply any of Chomsky’s rules keep turning up. That’s one reason his name is on the list of scientists admitting defeat—sort of. The last paragraph of their essay assures readers the answer is only awaiting further research.

Chomsky had it partly right, though: Even in the furthest reaches of the Amazon jungle every child is born with a unique capacity for grammar, if not a “universal grammar” of predetermined rules. Even the most obscure “primitive” language allows for telling stories and making jokes. Language is more than words, an obvious fact evolutionists often overlook. It’s a logos, a logical platform for reasoning and creating. God gives us language as a mark of His image, so we can reason and create—even more, so He can talk to us and we can talk to Him. The next time you pray, even silently, try to use complete sentences. And thank Him that you can.

Email jcheaney@wng.org