In From Hand to Mouth: The Origins of Language Michael
Corballis provides an engaging, highly readable and provocative account
of the evolution of human language. The primary thesis of his book is
that language evolved from manual and facial gestures rather than from
animal vocalizations, as is often assumed. While this point of view has
been expressed by others during the last few centuries (for example,
Condillac in 1747), it has never been argued more forcefully and with
as much supporting scholarly evidence. (I suspect that it has also
never been argued with greater use of hand/mouth adages,
clichés and puns.) Among the more provocative ideas is the
suggestion that human speech, like writing, was a cultural invention
subsequent to gestural language rather than the evolutionary essence of
language.