Author: Justin Cord Hayes
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1440542791
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 198
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Book Description
This book is awesome awful! Did you know that "awful" first originated as a compliment? How about the fact that it was perfectly fine for someone to defecate in their living room? Or that at one time a bully was actually a sweetheart? You may think that these things sound outlandish, but hundreds of years ago, the words "awful," "defecate," and "bully" meant something entirely different than what we know today. The Unexpected Evolution of Language reveals the origins of 208 everyday terms and the interesting stories behind their shift in meaning. Arranged in alphabetical order, you will enjoy uncovering the backstories to terms like: Awful - worthy of respect or fear; inspiring awe Bimbo - slang for a stupid, inconsequential man Defecate - to purify; cleanse Invest - to clothe; to dress Nice - foolish; stupid Relay - hunting term meaning fresh pack of hounds From "aftermath" and "sophisticated" to "empty" and "prestige," you will aboslutely love seeing just what kind of damage time has done to the English language.
Author: Andrew D. M. Smith
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9814295221
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 553
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Book Description
Balancing arbitrariness and systematicity in language evolution / Padraic Monaghan, Morten H. Christiansen, Stanka Fitneva -- Speaker-independent perception of human speech by zebra finches / Verena R. Ohms [und weitere] -- An avian model for language evolution / Irene Pepperberg -- Grooming gestures of chimpanzees in the wild : first insights into meaning and function / Simone Pika, Chris Knight -- The relevance ofthe developmental stress hypothesis to the evolution of language / Anne Pritchard -- Co-evolution of language and social network structure through cultural transmission / Justin Quillinan, Simon Kirby, Kenny Smith -- The origins of sociolinguistic marking and its role in language divergence : an experimental study / Gareth Roberts -- Considering language evolution from birdsong development / Kazutoshi Sasahara [und weitere] -- Semantic bootstrapping of grammar in embodied robots / Yo Sato, Joe Saunders -- Why do wild chimpanzees produce food-associated calls : a case of vocal grooming? / Anne Schel, Klaus Zuberbühler, Katie E. Slocombe -- The importance of exploring non-linguistic functions of human brain language areas for explaining language evolution / P. Thomas Schoenemann -- Language evolution : the view from adult second language learners / Marieke Schouwstra -- The evolution of communication and relevance / Thomas Scoff-Phillips -- Pragmatics not semantics as the basis for clause structure / Thomas Scoff-Phillips [und weitere]
Author: Terrence W. Deacon
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393343022
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 532
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Book Description
"A work of enormous breadth, likely to pleasantly surprise both general readers and experts."—New York Times Book Review This revolutionary book provides fresh answers to long-standing questions of human origins and consciousness. Drawing on his breakthrough research in comparative neuroscience, Terrence Deacon offers a wealth of insights into the significance of symbolic thinking: from the co-evolutionary exchange between language and brains over two million years of hominid evolution to the ethical repercussions that followed man's newfound access to other people's thoughts and emotions. Informing these insights is a new understanding of how Darwinian processes underlie the brain's development and function as well as its evolution. In contrast to much contemporary neuroscience that treats the brain as no more or less than a computer, Deacon provides a new clarity of vision into the mechanism of mind. It injects a renewed sense of adventure into the experience of being human.
Author: Andrew D M Smith
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9814472492
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 531
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Book Description
This volume comprises refereed papers and abstracts from the 7th International Conference on the Evolution of Language (EVOLANG7), held in Barcelona in March 2008. As the leading international conference in the field, the biennial EVOLANG meeting is characterized by an invigorating, multidisciplinary approach to the origins and evolution of human language, and brings together researchers from many fields including anthropology, archeology, artificial life, biology, cognitive science, computer science, ethology, genetics, linguistics, neuroscience, paleontology, primatology, psychology and statistical physics.The latest theoretical, experimental and modeling research on language evolution is presented in this collection. It includes contributions from leading scientists such as Derek Bickerton, Rudolf Botha, Camilo Cela Conde, Francesco d'Erico, Susan Goldin-Meadow, Simon Kirby, Gary Marcus, Friedemann Pulvermüller and Juan Uriagereka./a
Author: Christine Kenneally
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101202394
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 376
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Book Description
An accessible exploration of a burgeoning new field: the incredible evolution of language The first popular book to recount the exciting, very recent developments in tracing the origins of language, The First Word is at the forefront of a controversial, compelling new field. Acclaimed science writer Christine Kenneally explains how a relatively small group of scientists that include Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker assembled the astounding narrative of how the fundamental process of evolution produced a linguistic ape-in other words, us. Infused with the wonder of discovery, this vital and engrossing book offers us all a better understanding of the story of humankind.
Author: Angelo Cangelosi
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9812566562
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 476
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Book Description
This volume comprises refereed papers and abstracts from the 6th International Conference on the Evolution of Language (EVOLANG6). The biennial EVOLANG conference focuses on the origins and evolution of human language, and brings together researchers from many disciplines including anthropology, archaeology, artificial life, biology, cognitive science, computer science, ethology, genetics, linguistics, neuroscience, palaeontology, primatology, and psychology.The collection presents the latest theoretical, experimental and modeling research on language evolution, and includes contributions from the leading scientists in the field, including T Fitch, V Gallese, S Mithen, D Parisi, A Piazza & L Cavali Sforza, R Seyfarth & D Cheney, L Steels, L Talmy and M Tomasello.
Author: Loren C. Eiseley
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780156928502
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
A naturalist deals informally with the way in which totally unexpected twists in the evolutionary process bring renewal of hope in the life of our planet.
Author: Denise D. Cummins
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780195110531
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 284
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Book Description
In The Evolution of Mind, outstanding figures on the cutting edge of evolutionary psychology follow clues provided by current neuroscientific evidence to illuminate many puzzling questions of human cognitive evolution. With contributions from psychologists, ethologists, anthropologists, and philosophers, the book offers a broad range of approaches to explore the mysteries of the mind's evolution - from investigating the biological functions of human cognition to drawing comparisons between human and animal cognitive abilities.
Author: Rudolf Botha
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199654840
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 355
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Book Description
Leading primatologists, cognitive scientists, anthropologists, and linguists consider how language evolution can be understood by means of inference from the study of linked or analogous phenomena in language, animal behaviour, genetics, neurology, culture, and biology.
Author: John Haiman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110818457X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 396
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Book Description
Ideophones have been recognized in modern linguistics at least since 1935, but they still lie far outside the concerns of mainstream (Western) linguistic debate, in part because they are most richly attested in relatively unstudied (often unwritten) languages. The evolution of language, on the other hand, has recently become a fashionable topic, but all speculations so far have been almost totally data-free. Without disputing the tenet that there are no primitive languages, this book argues that ideophones may be an atavistic throwback to an earlier stage of communication, where sounds and gestures were paired in what can justifiably be called a 'prelinguistic' fashion. The structure of ideophones may also provide answers to deeper questions, among them how communicative gestures may themselves have emerged from practical actions. Moreover, their current distribution and behaviour provide hints as to how they may have become conventional words in languages with conventional rules.
