The Origin of Language: A New Edition

by Eric Gans, Adam Katz (Introduction)

“Mysteries should not be multiplied beyond necessity.”The Origin of Language remains as completely original and unprecedented (and intellectually demanding and satisfying) today as when it was originally published, so much so as to constitute a kind of intellectual scandal.

Genres: Philosophy, Language, Linguistics, Anthropology

156 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1981

Reviews

[شاهنشاه‎ · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting exploration of how exactly language came into being. This is the foundation of Gans' Generative Anthropology and offers some relatively interesting takes that differ from the anthropological and linguistic mainstream.

This book does very little explaining of the background terms and ideas. If you want to read this and get anything out of it a more than basic understanding of linguistics, grammar, and the theories of René Girard are basically required. Otherwise, you will probably end up wasting your time. Heidegger, Chomsky, and others are also frequently referenced, but here I think you could skate by with just some of their key relevant ideas.

There is some obnoxious intellectualism to be found here. The constant and totally unnecessary interspersal of French words and phrases (with perfectly adequate English equivalents) grates. He does this to a lesser extent with German and even Italian. Why? In a few - very few - places it makes sense when he is directly referring to Girard and Heidegger's exact wording, but otherwise, it feels unnecessarily pompous. C'est tout simplement trop, as he might say.

[Moistgoulash · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most intellectually important books ive ever read, absolutely destroyed my previous assumptions about human behavior and gave me the framework needed to construct my belief system and make it better than it ever was before.

[Ruby Khaja · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome, just what I needed to know that language is the way we think.