Oh no, I'm afraid my stint as a book reviewer is following a trajectory reminiscence of a kamikaze dive plane. Yes I know that I promised to have a full review of the book The First Word posted here a week ago, but ladies and gents, try as I might, I just couldn't get pass the first chapter entitled Noam Chomsky.

Geez! I knew that book reviewing wasn't all peaches and cream but really, trying to read Cristine Kenneally 5,000 word apology for the sins of Noam made this reviewer wish he was back truck driving. Get this: in essence Miss Kenneally wrote (laboriously) that although Mister Chomsky's ideas about words are all wrong and stupid we should all pay homage to him because he is wrong and stupid. Huh? That was it for me...I decided to skip-read the rest of the book.

But much as it pains me I must be fair. The middle chapters do offer some warm fuzzy anthropomorphic stories about the results of scientific investigations into the word-like grunts and coos of animals. For example a ten inch tall grey parrot named Alex was said to have been taugh to say and comprehend the meaning of over fifty words and numbers. Throw out a few red, white, and blue marbles and ask little Alex how many blue marbles did he see and he'd squeek out the answer. And most of the time he would be right. Cool. On the other hand the investigators say that they taugh talking Alex to understand the abstraction "zero"...

"Alex's understanding of "none" is more like a child's than an adult's: if I show him that nothing is hidden under a cup and ask him, 'How many nuts?' he is like some autistic children or like children around three years of age. He simply refuses to answer. For him there is nothing there to comment on."

And so on. So...

It pains me to report that at this juncture I must drop the ratings for The First Word at least until I have skip-read the rest of the book. I now rate this book ** 1/2


Last edited by themilum; 10/05/07 04:59 PM.