Simon Prentis and the Origin of the Brain

SIMON PRENTIS — SPEECH! HOW LANGUAGE MADE US HUMAN — KINDLE — 2021

The author is no phylogenist of language and despite remarkably interesting ideas and the a priori assumption that all languages can say everything in a way or another, he ignores the following elements and that is regrettable.

1- language is NEVER a simple sequence of noises, not even sounds. They are vowels and consonants from the very start. Monkeys do not have a language, but they have calls that are built the same way as our words: vowels that enable consonants to be uttered on a basic pattern C-V-C.

2- the difference between the “calls” of monkeys and human words is not in the difference between sonorous or vocal architectures of the items or units, but in the fact that human language invented the rotation of vowels and consonants. The basic call of the monkeys I know is “boom” often doubled up into “boom boom.” It is a call for attention before any meaningful call can be uttered (note that only concerns males and the researchers who studied these monkeys know that women and the young are “speaking” when they are together, but no study has…