Publisher Description

The book presents new and stimulating approaches to the study of language evolution and considers their implications for future research. Leading scholars from linguistics, primatology, anthroplogy, and cognitive science 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. In their introduction the editors show how theseapproaches can be interrelated and deployed together through their use of comparable forms of inference and the similar conditions they place on the use of evidence. The EvolutionaryEmergence of Language will interest everyone concerned with this intriguing and important subject, including those in linguistics, biology, anthropology, archaeology, neurology, and cognitive science.

Table of Contents

1: Rudolf Botha and Martin Everaert: Introduction: evidence and inference in the study of language evolution2: Stephen R. Anderson: What is special about the human language faculty and how did it get that way?3: Morten H. Christiansen: Language has evolved to depend on multiple-cue integration4: Ann Senghas, Asli Ozyürek, and Susan Goldin-Meadow: Homesign as a way-station between co-speech gesture and sign language: the evolution of segmenting and sequencing5: Maggie Tallerman: Kin selection, pedagogy and linguistic complexity: whence protolanguage?6: Katharine MacDonald and Wil Roebroeks: Neanderthal linguistic abilities: an alternative view7: Thomas Wynn, Frederick L. Coolidge, and Karenleigh Overmann: The archaeology of number concept and its implications for the evolution of language8: Peter Gärdenfors: The evolution of semantics: sharing conceptual domains9: Jacques Vauclair and Hélène Cochet: Speech-gesture links and the ontogeny and phylogeny of gestural communication10: Alban Lemasson, Karim Ouattara, and Klaus Zuberbühler: Exploring the gaps between primate calls and human language11: Kathleen R. Gibson: Talking about apes, birds, bees, and other living creatures: language evolution in light of comparative animal behaviour12: Alan Langus, Jana Petri, Marina Nespor, and Constance Scharff: FoxP2 and deep homology in the evolution of birdsong and human language13: Karl C. Diller and Rebecca L. Cann: Genetics, evolution, and the innateness of languageReferencesIndexes

Long Description

The book presents new and stimulating approaches to the study of language evolution and considers their implications for future research. Leading scholars from linguistics, primatology, anthroplogy, and cognitive science 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. In their introduction the editors show how these
approaches can be interrelated and deployed together through their use of comparable forms of inference and the similar conditions they place on the use of evidence. The Evolutionary Emergence of Language will interest everyone concerned with this intriguing and important subject,
including those in linguistics, biology, anthropology, archaeology, neurology, and cognitive science.

Feature

presents a new inferential approach to language evolution
considers evidence from language, animal behaviour, genetics, neurology, culture, and biology
brings together leading scholars from linguistics, primatology, and cognitive science

Details