Download or read book Cognition and Communication in the Evolution of Language written by Anne Reboul and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book proposes a new two-step approach to the evolution of language, whereby syntax first evolved as an auto-organizational process for the human conceptual apparatus (as a Language of Thought), and this Language of Thought was then externalized for communication, due to social selection pressures. Anne Reboul first argues that despite the routine use of language in communication, current use is not a failsafe guide to adaptive history. She points out that human cognition is as unique in nature as is language as a communication system, suggesting deep links between human thought and language. If language is seen as a communication system, then the specificities of language, its hierarchical syntax, its creativity, and the ability to use it to talk about absent objects, are a mystery. This book shows that approaching language as a system for thought overcomes these problems, and provides a detailed account of both steps in the evolution of language: its evolution for thought and its externalization for communication.
Download or read book Cognition and Communication in the Evolution of Language written by Anne Reboul and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-01 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book proposes a new two-step approach to the evolution of language, whereby syntax first evolved as an auto-organizational process for the human conceptual apparatus (as a Language of Thought), and this Language of Thought was then externalized for communication, owing to social selection pressures. Anne Reboul first argues that, despite the routine use of language in communication, current use is not a failsafe guide to adaptive history. She points out that human cognition is as unique in nature as is language as a communication system, suggesting deep links between human thought and language. If language is seen as a communication system, then the specificities of language, its hierarchical syntax, its creativity, and the ability to use it to talk about absent objects, are a mystery. This book shows that approaching language as a system for thought overcomes these problems, and provides a detailed account of both steps in the evolution of language: its evolution for thought and its externalization for communication.
Download or read book The Evolution of Language written by W. Tecumseh Fitch and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-04 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together the most important insights from the vast amount of literature on the origin of language.
Download or read book Approaches to the Evolution of Language written by James R. Hurford and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-09-17 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is one of the first systematic attempts to bring language within the neo-Darwinian framework of modern evolutionary theory, without abandoning the vast gains in phonology and syntax achieved by formal linguistics over the past forty years. The contributors, linguists, psychologists, and paleoanthropologists, address such questions as: what is language as a category of behavior; is it an instrument of thought or of communication; what do individuals know when they know a language; what cognitive, perceptual, and motor capacities must they have to speak, hear, and understand a language? For the past two centuries, scientists have tended to see language function as largely concerned with the exchange of practical information. By contrast, this volume takes as its starting point the view of human intelligence as social, and of language as a device for forming alliances, in exploring the origins of the sound patterns and formal structures that characterize language.
Download or read book The Handbook of Historical Linguistics Volume II written by Richard D. Janda and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 705 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An entirely new follow-up volume providing a detailed account of numerous additional issues, methods, and results that characterize current work in historical linguistics. This brand-new, second volume of The Handbook of Historical Linguistics is a complement to the well-established first volume first published in 2003. It includes extended content allowing uniquely comprehensive coverage of the study of language(s) over time. Though it adds fresh perspectives on several topics previously treated in the first volume, this Handbook focuses on extensions of diachronic linguistics beyond those key issues. This Handbook provides readers with studies of language change whose perspectives range from comparisons of large open vs. small closed corpora, via creolistics and linguistic contact in general, to obsolescence and endangerment of languages. Written by leading scholars in their respective fields, new chapters are offered on matters such as the origin of language, evidence from language for reconstructing human prehistory, invocations of language present in studies of language past, benefits of linguistic fieldwork for historical investigation, ways in which not only biological evolution but also field biology can serve as heuristics for research into the rise and spread of linguistic innovations, and more. Moreover, it: offers novel and broadened content complementing the earlier volume so as to provide the fullest available overview of a wholly engrossing field includes 23 all-new contributed chapters, treating some familiar themes from fresh perspectives but mostly covering entirely new topics features expanded discussion of material from language families other than Indo-European provides a multiplicity of views from numerous specialists in linguistic diachrony. The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, Volume II is an ideal book for undergraduate and graduate students in linguistics, researchers and professional linguists, as well as all those interested in the history of particular languages and the history of language more generally.
Download or read book Tools Language and Cognition in Human Evolution written by Kathleen Rita Gibson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looks at how humans have evolved complex behaviours such as language and culture.
Download or read book Cognitive Pragmatics written by Bruno G. Bara and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2010-05-28 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An argument that communication is a cooperative activity between agents, who together consciously and intentionally construct the meaning of their interaction. In Cognitive Pragmatics, Bruno Bara offers a theory of human communication that is both formalized through logic and empirically validated through experimental data and clinical studies. Bara argues that communication is a cooperative activity in which two or more agents together consciously and intentionally construct the meaning of their interaction. In true communication (which Bara distinguishes from the mere transmission of information), all the actors must share a set of mental states. Bara takes a cognitive perspective, investigating communication not from the viewpoint of an external observer (as is the practice in linguistics and the philosophy of language) but from within the mind of the individual. Bara examines communicative interaction through the notion of behavior and dialogue games, which structure both the generation and the comprehension of the communication act (either language or gesture). He describes both standard communication and nonstandard communication (which includes deception, irony, and "as-if" statements). Failures are analyzed in detail, with possible solutions explained. Bara investigates communicative competence in both evolutionary and developmental terms, tracing its emergence from hominids to Homo sapiens and defining the stages of its development in humans from birth to adulthood. He correlates his theory with the neurosciences, and explains the decay of communication that occurs both with different types of brain injury and with Alzheimer's disease. Throughout, Bara offers supporting data from the literature and his own research. The innovative theoretical framework outlined by Bara will be of interest not only to cognitive scientists and neuroscientists but also to anthropologists, linguists, and developmental psychologists.
Download or read book The First Word written by Christine Kenneally and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007-07-19 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Language Phenomenon written by P.-M. Binder and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-04-05 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains a contemporary, integrated description of the processes of language. These range from fast scales (fractions of a second) to slow ones (over a million years). The contributors, all experts in their fields, address language in the brain, production of sentences and dialogues, language learning, transmission and evolutionary processes that happen over centuries or millenia, the relation between language and genes, the origins of language, self-organization, and language competition and death. The book as a whole will help to show how processes at different scales affect each other, thus presenting language as a dynamic, complex and profoundly human phenomenon.
Download or read book Animal Communication Theory written by Ulrich E. Stegmann and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The explanation of animal communication by means of concepts like information, meaning and reference is one of the central foundational issues in animal behaviour studies. This book explores these issues, revolving around questions such as: • What is the nature of information? • What theoretical roles does information play in animal communication studies? • Is it justified to employ these concepts in order to explain animal communication? • What is the relation between animal signals and human language? The book approaches the topic from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including ethology, animal cognition, theoretical biology and evolutionary biology, as well as philosophy of biology and mind. A comprehensive introduction familiarises non-specialists with the field and leads on to chapters ranging from philosophical and theoretical analyses to case studies involving primates, birds and insects. The resulting survey of new and established concepts and methodologies will guide future empirical and theoretical research.
Download or read book Human Language written by Peter Hagoort and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-10-29 with total page 753 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique overview of the human language faculty at all levels of organization. Language is not only one of the most complex cognitive functions that we command, it is also the aspect of the mind that makes us uniquely human. Research suggests that the human brain exhibits a language readiness not found in the brains of other species. This volume brings together contributions from a range of fields to examine humans' language capacity from multiple perspectives, analyzing it at genetic, neurobiological, psychological, and linguistic levels. In recent decades, advances in computational modeling, neuroimaging, and genetic sequencing have made possible new approaches to the study of language, and the contributors draw on these developments. The book examines cognitive architectures, investigating the functional organization of the major language skills; learning and development trajectories, summarizing the current understanding of the steps and neurocognitive mechanisms in language processing; evolutionary and other preconditions for communication by means of natural language; computational tools for modeling language; cognitive neuroscientific methods that allow observations of the human brain in action, including fMRI, EEG/MEG, and others; the neural infrastructure of language capacity; the genome's role in building and maintaining the language-ready brain; and insights from studying such language-relevant behaviors in nonhuman animals as birdsong and primate vocalization. Section editors Christian F. Beckmann, Carel ten Cate, Simon E. Fisher, Peter Hagoort, Evan Kidd, Stephen C. Levinson, James M. McQueen, Antje S. Meyer, David Poeppel, Caroline F. Rowland, Constance Scharff, Ivan Toni, Willem Zuidema
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution written by Maggie Tallerman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 790 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Why Only Us written by Robert C. Berwick and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-05-12 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Bilingual Cognition and Language written by David Miller and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2018-02-15 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection brings together leading names in the field of bilingualism research to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Studies in Bilingualism series. Over the last 25 years the study of bilingualism has received a tremendous amount of attention from linguists, psychologists, cognitive scientists, and neuroscientists. The breadth of coverage in this volume is a testament to the many different aspects of bilingualism that continue to generate phenomenal interest in the scholarly community. The bilingual experience is captured through a multifaceted prism that includes aspects of language and literacy development in child bilinguals with and without developmental language disorders, language processing and mental representations in adult bilinguals across the lifespan, and the cognitive and neurological basis of bilingualism. Different theoretical approaches – from generative UG-based models to constructivist usage-based models – are brought to bear on the nature of bilingual linguistic knowledge. The end result is a compendium of the state-of-the-art of a field that is in constant evolution and that is on an upward trajectory of discovery.
Download or read book Origins of Language written by Sverker Johansson and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2005-02-17 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sverker Johansson has written an unusual book on language origins, with its emphasis on empirical evidence rather than theory-building. This is a book for the student or researcher who prefers solid data and well-supported conclusions, over speculative scenarios. Much that has been written on the origins of language is characterized by hypothesizing largely unconstrained by evidence. But empirical data do exist, and the purpose of this book is to integrate and review the available evidence from all relevant disciplines, not only linguistics but also, e.g., neurology, primatology, paleoanthropology, and evolutionary biology. The evidence is then used to constrain the multitude of scenarios for language origins, demonstrating that many popular hypotheses are untenable. Among the issues covered: (1) Human evolutionary history, (2) Anatomical prerequisites for language, (3) Animal communication and ape "language", (4) Mind and language, (5) The role of gesture, (6) Innateness, (7) Selective advantage of language, (8) Proto-language.
Download or read book The Handbook of Psycholinguistic and Cognitive Processes written by Jackie Guendouzi and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2011-01-07 with total page 845 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook includes an overview of those areas of cognition and language processing that are relevant to the field of communication disorders, and provides examples of theoretical approaches to problems and issues in communication disorders. The first section includes a collection of chapters that outline some of the basic considerations and areas of cognition and language that underlie communication processing; a second section explains and exemplifies some of the influential theories of psycholinguistic/cognitive processing; and the third section illustrates theoretical applications to clinical populations. There is coverage of theories that have been either seminal or controversial in the research of communication disorders. Given the increasing multi-cultural workload of many practitioners working with clinical populations, chapters relating to bilingual populations are also included. The volume book provides a single interdisciplinary source where researchers and students can access information on psycholinguistic and cognitive processing theories relevant to clinical populations. A range of theories, models, and perspectives are provided. The range of topics and issues illustrate the relevance of a dynamic interaction between theoretical and applied work, and retains the complexity of psycholinguistic and cognitive theory for readers (both researchers and graduate students) whose primary interest is the field of communication disorders.
Download or read book Primate Communication and Human Language written by Anne Vilain and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2011-03-30 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After a long period where it has been conceived as iconoclastic and almost forbidden, the question of language origins is now at the centre of a rich debate, confronting acute proposals and original theories. Most importantly, the debate is nourished by a large set of experimental data from disciplines surrounding language. The editors of the present book have gathered researchers from various fields, with the common objective of taking as seriously as possible the search for continuities from non-human primate vocal and gestural communication systems to human speech and language, in a multidisciplinary perspective combining ethology, neuroscience, developmental psychology and linguistics, as well as computer science and robotics. New data and theoretical elaborations on the emergence of referential communication and language are debated here by some of the most creative scientists in the world.
