Evolutionary Emergence of Language (eBook, PDF)

Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form
Redaktion: Knight, Chris

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

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.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Cambridge University Press
• Erscheinungstermin: 13. November 2000
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780511030796
• Artikelnr.: 38187695

Inhaltsangabe

Part I. The Evolution of Cooperative Communication: 1. Introduction: the
evolution of cooperative communication Chris Knight; 2. Comprehension,
production and conventionalization in the origins of language Robbins
Burling; 3. Co-operation, competition and the evolution of pre-linguistic
communication Jason Noble; 4. Language and hominid politics Jean-Louis
Dessalles; 5. Secret language use at female initiation: bounding gossiping
communities Camilla Power; 6. Play as precursor of phonology and syntax
Chris Knight; Part II. The Emergence of Phonetic Structure: 7.
Introduction: the emergence of phonetic structure Michael Studdert-Kennedy;
8. The role of mimesis in infant language development: evidence for
phylogeny? Marilyn M. Vihman and Rory A. DePaolis; 9. Evolution of speech:
the relation between ontogeny and phylogeny Peter J. MacNeilage and Barbara
L. Davis; 10. Evolutionary implications of the particulate principle:
imitation and the dissociation of phonetic form from semantic function
Michael Studdert-Kennedy; 11. Emergence of sound systems through
self-organisation Bart de Boer; 12. Modelling language-physiology
coevolution Daniel Livingstone and Colin Fyfe; Part III. The Evolution of
Syntax: 13. The emergence of syntax James R. Hurford; 14. The spandrels of
the linguistic genotype David Lightfoot; 15. The distinction between
sentences and noun phrases: an impediment to language evolution? Andrew
Carstairs-McCarthy; 16. How protolanguage became language Derek Bickerton;
17. Holistic utterances in protolanguage: the link from primates to humans
Alison Wray; 18. Syntax without natural selection: how compositionality
emerges from vocabulary in a population of learners Simon Kirby; 19. Social
transmission favours linguistic generalization James R. Hurford; 20. Words,
memes and language evolution Robert P. Worden; 21. On the reconstruction of
'proto-world' word order Frederick J. Newmeyer; Epilogue; 22. The history,
rate and pattern of world linguistic evolution Mark Pagel.