The notion that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny has a long tradition, with the collection here being a recent and cogent revisit of the idea. Among the possibly relevant data are, as the back cover states, “aspects of language learning that may serve as models of evolutionary change.”
Indeed, one section of the volume focuses on language learning, but before taking a closer look at that part, other sections should be mentioned. Part 1, “Language and the Brain,” consists mainly of neurological analyses, and Part 2, “Language and Cognition,” considers problems related to processing of linguistic structures (including two chapters on phonetics in early child language). Part 3, “Language and Social Cognition,” has topics that range from attempted reconstructions of the social environments that favored the evolution of language (the chapters by MacWhinney and Malle) to intentionality in child language and its possible significance for the phylogeny of language (the chapter by Baldwin).
Baldwin's chapter reviews research on first language (L1) acquisition, and this approach is likewise seen in Part 4, “Language Development,” in the chapters by Tomasello, Montford, Goldin-Meadow, and Slobin. These chapters will probably be the ones that SLA researchers will consider most closely—and then mainly if they are interested in reflecting on the similarities and differences between L1 and second language (L2) acquisition. Although a number of the contributors have elsewhere looked closely at SLA (e.g., MacWhinney), there are only sporadic mentions of SLA in this volume.
A few examples will highlight some of the most worthwhile points in this collection. The chapter by Tomasello stresses holophrasis, in which children's utterances are seen as developing first as big words, which eventually lead to recombinations that allow for increasing abstraction from particular contexts and for greater creativity. Although hardly the first to foreground holophrastic dimensions of acquisition, Tomasello has been working with colleagues who draw on comparative insights from typologically different languages. He also speculates on the possibility of an earlier stage of human evolution in which holophrasis was not so much a developmental stage as a primary structural characteristic of the precursor of the languages of homo sapiens.
At first glance, Goldin-Meadow's chapter seems radically different from Tomasello's. She focuses on sign language instead of spoken language, and she gives special attention to cases of deaf children who spontaneously invent their own systems. There are unique opportunities in such research to explore the possibilities of human language creation and linguistic evolution, and Goldin-Meadow identifies several areas that are probably common to spontaneous signing and other types of acquisition, including predicate frames and recursion (in the area of grammar) and both displaced and here-and-now talk (in the area of language use). Like Tomasello, Goldin-Meadow deems holophrasis a preliminary stage in language creation, and she likewise sees an eventual development of holophrastic utterances into more analytic signs, albeit in a different modality.
The insights of Tomasello and Goldin-Meadow are certainly reminiscent of work in SLA on prefabricated utterances, and it seems plausible to discern a common thread in the creations of adults as well as children. However, the volume also offers reasons to be cautious about generalizing across L1 and L2 situations, especially when adults are involved. Goldin-Meadow finds, for example, that hearing adults who know signs and use them in conjunction with their speech differ considerably from deaf children in their signing patterns. Baldwin likewise stresses that one of the tasks facing children is to come to realize that they and those around them have intentions. For adult language users, of course, the task is not to discover intentionality but, instead, to associate particular intentions with particular utterances.
The insights on child acquisition reflect only one of the themes of the volume, another being language evolution in the human species. Here the ideas are usually intriguing, although not always consistent—or perhaps even possible to resolve. MacWhinney, for instance, argues that the ancestors of modern humans would have lived in larger groups, whereas Givón maintains that the small size of many groups today argues for a comparable situation in the remote past. It is also noteworthy that, to the credit of the editors, they included a chapter by Slobin, someone long skeptical that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. Whether or not such disagreements can ever be resolved, the discussions in this volume offer much to reflect on in the development of language.
