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Author: Michael A. Arbib
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027222541
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 196
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Book Description
Somewhere and somehow, in the 5 to 7 million years since the last common ancestors of humans and the great apes, our ancestors got language. The authors of this volume all agree that there was no single mutation or cultural innovation that took our ancestors directly from a limited system of a few vocalizations (primarily innate) and gestures (some learned) to language. They further agree to use the term protolanguage for the beginnings of an open system of symbolic communication that provided the bridge to the use of fully expressive languages, rich in both lexicon and grammar. But here consensus ends, and the theories presented here range from the "compositional view" that protolanguage was based primarily on words akin to the nouns and verbs, etc., we know today with only syntax lacking to the "holophrastic view" that protolanguage used protowords which had no meaningful subunits which might nonetheless refer to complex but significantly recurrent events. The present volume does not decide the matter but it does advance our understanding. The lack of any direct archaeological record of protolanguage might seem to raise insuperable difficulties. However, this volume exhibits the diversity of methodologies that can be brought to bear in developing datasets that can be used to advance the debate.These articles were originally published as "Interaction Studies" 9:1 (2008)."
Author: Michael A. Arbib
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027222541
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 196
Get Book Here
Book Description
Somewhere and somehow, in the 5 to 7 million years since the last common ancestors of humans and the great apes, our ancestors got language. The authors of this volume all agree that there was no single mutation or cultural innovation that took our ancestors directly from a limited system of a few vocalizations (primarily innate) and gestures (some learned) to language. They further agree to use the term protolanguage for the beginnings of an open system of symbolic communication that provided the bridge to the use of fully expressive languages, rich in both lexicon and grammar. But here consensus ends, and the theories presented here range from the "compositional view" that protolanguage was based primarily on words akin to the nouns and verbs, etc., we know today with only syntax lacking to the "holophrastic view" that protolanguage used protowords which had no meaningful subunits which might nonetheless refer to complex but significantly recurrent events. The present volume does not decide the matter but it does advance our understanding. The lack of any direct archaeological record of protolanguage might seem to raise insuperable difficulties. However, this volume exhibits the diversity of methodologies that can be brought to bear in developing datasets that can be used to advance the debate.These articles were originally published as "Interaction Studies" 9:1 (2008)."
Author: Chris Knight
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521786966
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 444
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Book Description
Language has no counterpart in the animal world. Unique to Homo sapiens, it appears inseparable from human nature. But how, when and why did it emerge? The contributors to this volume - linguists, anthropologists, cognitive scientists, and others - adopt a modern Darwinian perspective which offers a bold synthesis of the human and natural sciences. As a feature of human social intelligence, language evolution is driven by biologically anomalous levels of social cooperation. Phonetic competence correspondingly reflects social pressures for vocal imitation, learning, and other forms of social transmission. Distinctively human social and cultural strategies gave rise to the complex syntactical structure of speech. This book, presenting language as a remarkable social adaptation, testifies to the growing influence of evolutionary thinking in contemporary linguistics. It will be welcomed by all those interested in human evolution, evolutionary psychology, linguistic anthropology, and general linguistics.
Author: Maggie Tallerman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199541116
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 790
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Book Description
Leading scholars present critical accounts of every aspect of the field, including work in animal behaviour; anatomy, genetics and neurology; the prehistory of language; the development of our uniquely linguistic species; and language creation, transmission, and change.
Author: Derek Bickerton
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022622094X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 311
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Book Description
Language and Species presents the most detailed and well-documented scenario to date of the origins of language. Drawing on "living linguistic fossils" such as "ape talk," the "two-word" stage of small children, and pidgin languages, and on recent discoveries in paleoanthropology, Bickerton shows how a primitive "protolanguage" could have offered Homo erectus a novel ecological niche. He goes on to demonstrate how this protolanguage could have developed into the languages we speak today. "You are drawn into [Bickerton's] appreciation of the dominant role language plays not only in what we say, but in what we think and, therefore, what we are."—Robert Wright, New York Times Book Review "The evolution of language is a fascinating topic, and Bickerton's Language and Species is the best introduction we have."—John C. Marshall, Nature
Author: Derek Bickerton
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3946234089
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
Roots of language was originally published in 1981 by Karoma Press (Ann Arbor). It was the first work to systematically develop a theory first suggested by Coelho in the late nineteenth century: that the creation of creole languages somehow reflected universal properties of language. The book also proposed that the same set of properties would be found to emerge in normal first-language acquisition and must have emerged in the original evolution of language. These proposals, some of which were elaborated in an article in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (1984), were immediately controversial and gave rise to a great deal of subsequent research in creoles, much of it aimed at rebutting the theory. The book also served to legitimize and stimulate research in language evolution, a topic regarded as off-limits by linguists for over a century. The present edition contains a foreword by the author bringing the theory up to date; a fuller exposition of many of its aspects can be found in the author's most recent work, More than nature needs (Harvard University Press, 2014).
Author: Robert K. Logan
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 0802093035
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 329
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Book Description
The ability to communicate through language is such a fundamental part of human existence that we often take it for granted, rarely considering how sophisticated the process is by which we understand and make ourselves understood. In The Extended Mind, acclaimed author Robert K. Logan examines the origin, emergence, and co-evolution of language, the human mind, and culture. Building on his previous study, The Sixth Language (2000) and making use of emergence theory, Logan seeks to explain how language emerged to deal with the complexity of hominid existence brought about by tool-making, control of fire, social intelligence, coordinated hunting and gathering, and mimetic communication. The resulting emergence of language, he argues, signifies a fundemental change in the functioning of the human mind a shift from percept-based thought to concept-based thought. From the perspective of the Extended Mind model, Logan provides an alternative to and critique of Noam Chomskys approach to the origin of language. He argues that language can be treated as an organism that evolved to be easily acquired, obviating the need for the hard-wiring of Chomskys Language Acquisition Device. In addition Logan shows how, according to this model, culture itself can be treated as an organism that has evolved to be easily attained, revealing the universality of human culture as well as providing an insight as to how altruism might have originated. Bringing timely insights to a fascinating field of inquiry, The Extended Mind will be sure to find a wide readership.
Author: Derek Bickerton
Publisher: Hill and Wang
ISBN: 1429930292
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 295
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Book Description
How language evolved has been called "the hardest problem in science." In Adam's Tongue, Derek Bickerton—long a leading authority in this field—shows how and why previous attempts to solve that problem have fallen short. Taking cues from topics as diverse as the foraging strategies of ants, the distribution of large prehistoric herbivores, and the construction of ecological niches, Bickerton produces a dazzling new alternative to the conventional wisdom. Language is unique to humans, but it isn't the only thing that sets us apart from other species—our cognitive powers are qualitatively different. So could there be two separate discontinuities between humans and the rest of nature? No, says Bickerton; he shows how the mere possession of symbolic units—words—automatically opened a new and different cognitive universe, one that yielded novel innovations ranging from barbed arrowheads to the Apollo spacecraft. Written in Bickerton's lucid and irreverent style, this book is the first that thoroughly integrates the story of how language evolved with the story of how humans evolved. Sure to be controversial, it will make indispensable reading both for experts in the field and for every reader who has ever wondered how a species as remarkable as ours could have come into existence.
Author: Talmy Givón
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027229595
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 410
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Book Description
The contributors to this volume are linguists, psychologists, neuroscientists, primatologists, and anthropologists who share the assumption that language, just as mind and brain, are products of biological evolution. The rise of human language is not viewed as a serendipitous mutation that gave birth to a unique linguistic organ, but as a gradual, adaptive extension of pre-existing mental capacities and brain structures. The contributors carefully study brain mechanisms, diachronic change, language acquisition, and the parallels between cognitive and linguistic structures to weave a web of hypotheses and suggestive empirical findings on the origins of language and the connections of language to other human capacities. The chapters discuss brain pathways that support linguistic processing; origins of specific linguistic features in temporal and hierarchical structures of the mind; the possible co-evolution of language and the reasoning about mental states; and the aspects of language learning that may serve as models of evolutionary change.
Author: Nobuo Masataka
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 4431791027
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 161
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Book Description
Developments in cognitive science indicate that human and nonhuman primates share a range of behavioral and physiological characteristics that speak to the issue of language origins. This volume has three major themes, woven throughout the chapters. First, it is argued that scientists in animal behavior and anthropology need to move beyond theoretical debate to a more empirically focused and comparative approach to language. Second, those empirical and comparative methods are described, revealing underpinnings of language, some of which are shared by humans and other primates and others of which are unique to humans. New insights are discussed, and several hypotheses emerge concerning the evolutionary forces that led to the "design" of language. Third, evolutionary challenges that led to adaptive changes in communication over time are considered with an eye toward understanding various constraints that channeled the process.
Author: Michael A. Arbib
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 0199896682
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 436
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Book Description
Unlike any other species, humans can learn and use language. This book explains how the brain evolved to make language possible, through what Michael Arbib calls the Mirror System Hypothesis. Because of mirror neurons, monkeys, chimps, and humans can learn by imitation, but only "complex imitation," which humans exhibit, is powerful enough to support the breakthrough to language. This theory provides a path from the openness of manual gesture, which we share with nonhuman primates, through the complex imitation of manual skills, pantomime, protosign (communication based on conventionalized manual gestures), and finally to protospeech. The theory explains why we humans are as capable of learning sign languages as we are of learning to speak. This fascinating book shows how cultural evolution took over from biological evolution for the transition from protolanguage to fully fledged languages. The author explains how the brain mechanisms that made the original emergence of languages possible, perhaps 100,000 years ago, are still operative today in the way children acquire language, in the way that new sign languages have emerged in recent decades, and in the historical processes of language change on a time scale from decades to centuries. Though the subject is complex, this book is highly readable, providing all the necessary background in primatology, neuroscience, and linguistics to make the book accessible to a general audience.
