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Author: W. Tecumseh Fitch
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 113948706X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 625
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Book Description
Language, more than anything else, is what makes us human. It appears that no communication system of equivalent power exists elsewhere in the animal kingdom. Any normal human child will learn a language based on rather sparse data in the surrounding world, while even the brightest chimpanzee, exposed to the same environment, will not. Why not? How, and why, did language evolve in our species and not in others? Since Darwin's theory of evolution, questions about the origin of language have generated a rapidly-growing scientific literature, stretched across a number of disciplines, much of it directed at specialist audiences. The diversity of perspectives - from linguistics, anthropology, speech science, genetics, neuroscience and evolutionary biology - can be bewildering. Tecumseh Fitch cuts through this vast literature, bringing together its most important insights to explore one of the biggest unsolved puzzles of human history.
Author: David F. Armstrong
Publisher: Perspectives on Deafness
ISBN: 0195163486
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 162
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Book Description
This is a unique view of the origins of language, describing what linguistic science would look like if sign language rather than speech was used as the basis for the study of language systems.
Author: W. Tecumseh Fitch
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 113948706X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 625
Get Book Here
Book Description
Language, more than anything else, is what makes us human. It appears that no communication system of equivalent power exists elsewhere in the animal kingdom. Any normal human child will learn a language based on rather sparse data in the surrounding world, while even the brightest chimpanzee, exposed to the same environment, will not. Why not? How, and why, did language evolve in our species and not in others? Since Darwin's theory of evolution, questions about the origin of language have generated a rapidly-growing scientific literature, stretched across a number of disciplines, much of it directed at specialist audiences. The diversity of perspectives - from linguistics, anthropology, speech science, genetics, neuroscience and evolutionary biology - can be bewildering. Tecumseh Fitch cuts through this vast literature, bringing together its most important insights to explore one of the biggest unsolved puzzles of human history.
Author: Daniel L. Everett
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
ISBN: 087140477X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 309
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Book Description
A Buzzfeed Gift Guide Selection “Few books on the biological and cultural origin of humanity can be ranked as classics. I believe [this] will be one of them.” — Edward O. Wilson At the time of its publication, How Language Began received high acclaim for capturing the fascinating history of mankind’s most incredible creation. Deemed a “bombshell” linguist and “instant folk hero” by Tom Wolfe (Harper’s), Daniel L. Everett posits that the near- 7,000 languages that exist today are not only the product of one million years of evolution but also have allowed us to become Earth’s apex predator. Tracing 60,000 generations, Everett debunks long- held theories across a spectrum of disciplines to affi rm the idea that we are not born with an instinct for language. Woven with anecdotes of his nearly forty years of fi eldwork amongst Amazonian hunter- gatherers, this is a “completely enthralling” (Spectator) exploration of our humanity and a landmark study of what makes us human. “[An] ambitious text. . . . Everett’s amiable tone, and especially his captivating anecdotes . . . , will help the neophyte along.”— New York Times Book Review
Author: Merritt Ruhlen
Publisher: Gorgias Press
ISBN: 9781463244965
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
This book, The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue, originally published in 1994 by John Wiley & Sons, was written in a more popular style, accessible to an educated general audience, than the more scholarly and academic tome of a similar title, On the Origin of Languages: Studies in Linguistic Taxonomy, published the same year. In The Origin of Language Ruhlen laid out the principles of linguistic genetic classification, i.e., classifying languages into families according to common origins rather than typological features. Ruhlen showed how simple this can be, especially for languages that have diverged for a few millennia, by juxtaposing short lists of basic (non-cultural) words like eye, fire, and tongue. He also showed that the same methods can be used to postulate older and deeper families, often called "macro-families" or "macrophyla," by comparing reconstructed forms from lower-level families. Such deeper families (e.g., Nostratic, Dene-Caucasian, Nilo-Saharan, Austric) are generally more controversial than lower-level families, but Ruhlen did not shy from discussing them if he thought the evidence supported them. Ruhlen was also interested in other fields of anthropology, such as archaeology and human genetics, and brought these fields into play.
Author: Robert C. Berwick
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262533499
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 229
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Book Description
Berwick and Chomsky draw on recent developments in linguistic theory to offer an evolutionary account of language and humans' remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire it. “A loosely connected collection of four essays that will fascinate anyone interested in the extraordinary phenomenon of language.” —New York Review of Books We are born crying, but those cries signal the first stirring of language. Within a year or so, infants master the sound system of their language; a few years after that, they are engaging in conversations. This remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire any human language—“the language faculty”—raises important biological questions about language, including how it has evolved. This book by two distinguished scholars—a computer scientist and a linguist—addresses the enduring question of the evolution of language. Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky explain that until recently the evolutionary question could not be properly posed, because we did not have a clear idea of how to define “language” and therefore what it was that had evolved. But since the Minimalist Program, developed by Chomsky and others, we know the key ingredients of language and can put together an account of the evolution of human language and what distinguishes us from all other animals. Berwick and Chomsky discuss the biolinguistic perspective on language, which views language as a particular object of the biological world; the computational efficiency of language as a system of thought and understanding; the tension between Darwin's idea of gradual change and our contemporary understanding about evolutionary change and language; and evidence from nonhuman animals, in particular vocal learning in songbirds.
Author: Merritt Ruhlen
Publisher: Wiley
ISBN: 9780471159636
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
"Ruhlen is a leader in the new attempt to unify the theory of language development and diffusion."––Library Journal "A powerful statement...also a wonderfully clear exposition of linguistic thinking about prehistory."––Anthropological Science One of the world's foremost language researchers takes readers step-by-step through the hotly contested evidence that all modern languages derive from one "mother tongue" once spoken by primitive humans in Africa. With The Origin of Language, Merritt Ruhlen makes this fascinating science accessible to readers with no linguistic background. MERRITT RUHLEN, PhD (Palo Alto, California) is the author of A Guide to the World's Languages
Author: Steven Roger Fischer
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1861895941
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 244
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Book Description
It is tempting to take the tremendous rate of contemporary linguistic change for granted. What is required, in fact, is a radical reinterpretation of what language is. Steven Roger Fischer begins his book with an examination of the modes of communication used by dolphins, birds and primates as the first contexts in which the concept of "language" might be applied. As he charts the history of language from the times of Homo erectus, Neanderthal humans and Homo sapiens through to the nineteenth century, when the science of linguistics was developed, Fischer analyses the emergence of language as a science and its development as a written form. He considers the rise of pidgin, creole, jargon and slang, as well as the effects radio and television, propaganda, advertising and the media are having on language today. Looking to the future, he shows how electronic media will continue to reshape and re-invent the ways in which we communicate. "[a] delightful and unexpectedly accessible book ... a virtuoso tour of the linguistic world."—The Economist "... few who read this remarkable study will regard language in quite the same way again."—The Good Book Guide
Author: Jean-Louis Dessalles
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199276234
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 398
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Book Description
Constant exchange of information is integral to our societies. The author explores how this came into being. Presenting language evolution as a natural history of conversation, he sheds light on the emergence of communication in the hominine congregations, as well as on the human nature.
Author: Wolfgang Wildgen
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027251930
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 264
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Book Description
Wolfgang Wildgen presents three perspectives on the evolution of language as a key element in the evolution of mankind in terms of the development of human symbol use. (1) He approaches this question by constructing possible scenarios in which mechanisms necessary for symbolic behavior could have developed, on the basis of the state of the art in evolutionary anthropology and genetics. (2) Non-linguistic symbolic behavior such as cave art is investigated as an important clue to the developmental background to the origin of language. Creativity and innovation and a population's ability to integrate individual experiments are considered with regard to historical examples of symbolic creativity in the visual arts and natural sciences. (3) Probable linguistic 'fossils' of such linguistic innovations are examined. The results of this study allow for new proposals for a 'protolanguage' and for a theory of language within a broader philosophical and semiotic framework, and raises interesting questions as to human consciousness, universal grammar, and linguistic methodology. (Series B)
Author: Philip Lieberman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674074132
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 398
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Book Description
This book synthesizes much of the exciting recent research in the biology of language. Drawing on data from anatomy, neurophysiology, physiology, and behavioral biology, Philip Lieberman develops a new approach to the puzzle of language, arguing that it is the result of many evolutionary compromises. Within his discussion, Lieberman skillfully addresses matters as various as the theory of neoteny (which he refutes), the mating calls of bullfrogs, ape language, dyslexia, and computer-implemented models of the brain.
