Download or read book The Social Origins of Language written by Robert M. Seyfarth and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-12-05 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How human language evolved from the need for social communication The origins of human language remain hotly debated. Despite growing appreciation of cognitive and neural continuity between humans and other animals, an evolutionary account of human language—in its modern form—remains as elusive as ever. The Social Origins of Language provides a novel perspective on this question and charts a new path toward its resolution. In the lead essay, Robert Seyfarth and Dorothy Cheney draw on their decades-long pioneering research on monkeys and baboons in the wild to show how primates use vocalizations to modulate social dynamics. They argue that key elements of human language emerged from the need to decipher and encode complex social interactions. In other words, social communication is the biological foundation upon which evolution built more complex language. Seyfarth and Cheney’s argument serves as a jumping-off point for responses by John McWhorter, Ljiljana Progovac, Jennifer E. Arnold, Benjamin Wilson, Christopher I. Petkov and Peter Godfrey-Smith, each of whom draw on their respective expertise in linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology. Michael Platt provides an introduction, Seyfarth and Cheney a concluding essay. Ultimately, The Social Origins of Language offers thought-provoking viewpoints on how human language evolved.

Download or read book The Social Origins of Language written by Danny Dor and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a new perspective on the origins of language, and highlights the key role of social and cultural dynamics in driving language evolution. It considers, among other questions, the role of gesture in communication, mimesis, play, dance, and song in extant hunter-gatherer communities, and the time-frame for language evolution.

Download or read book The Social Origins of Language written by Daniel Dor and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a new perspective on the origins of language, and highlights the key role of social and cultural dynamics in driving language evolution. It considers, among other questions, the role of gesture in communication, mimesis, play, dance, and song in extant hunter-gatherer communities, and the time-frame for language evolution.

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 History of Language written by Steven Roger Fischer and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2004-10-03 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is tempting to take the tremendous rate of contemporary linguistic change for granted. What is required, in fact, is a radical reinterpretation of what language is. Steven Roger Fischer begins his book with an examination of the modes of communication used by dolphins, birds and primates as the first contexts in which the concept of "language" might be applied. As he charts the history of language from the times of Homo erectus, Neanderthal humans and Homo sapiens through to the nineteenth century, when the science of linguistics was developed, Fischer analyses the emergence of language as a science and its development as a written form. He considers the rise of pidgin, creole, jargon and slang, as well as the effects radio and television, propaganda, advertising and the media are having on language today. Looking to the future, he shows how electronic media will continue to reshape and re-invent the ways in which we communicate. "[a] delightful and unexpectedly accessible book ... a virtuoso tour of the linguistic world."—The Economist "... few who read this remarkable study will regard language in quite the same way again."—The Good Book Guide

Download or read book Why We Talk written by Jean-Louis Dessalles and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007-01-04 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Constant exchange of information is integral to our societies. The author explores how this came into being. Presenting language evolution as a natural history of conversation, he sheds light on the emergence of communication in the hominine congregations, as well as on the human nature.

Download or read book The Evolutionary Emergence of Language written by Chris Knight and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-11-20 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Music and the Origins of Language written by Downing A. Thomas and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1995-06-15 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study analyses reflections on music and considers ways in which it facilitates links between language and meaning.

Download or read book The Social Origins of Language written by Robert M. Seyfarth and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-12-05 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How human language evolved from the need for social communication The origins of human language remain hotly debated. Despite growing appreciation of cognitive and neural continuity between humans and other animals, an evolutionary account of human language—in its modern form—remains as elusive as ever. The Social Origins of Language provides a novel perspective on this question and charts a new path toward its resolution. In the lead essay, Robert Seyfarth and Dorothy Cheney draw on their decades-long pioneering research on monkeys and baboons in the wild to show how primates use vocalizations to modulate social dynamics. They argue that key elements of human language emerged from the need to decipher and encode complex social interactions. In other words, social communication is the biological foundation upon which evolution built more complex language. Seyfarth and Cheney’s argument serves as a jumping-off point for responses by John McWhorter, Ljiljana Progovac, Jennifer E. Arnold, Benjamin Wilson, Christopher I. Petkov and Peter Godfrey-Smith, each of whom draw on their respective expertise in linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology. Michael Platt provides an introduction, Seyfarth and Cheney a concluding essay. Ultimately, The Social Origins of Language offers thought-provoking viewpoints on how human language evolved.

Download or read book New Perspectives on the Origins of Language written by Claire Lefebvre and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2013-11-15 with total page 600 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The question of how language emerged is one of the most fascinating and difficult problems in science. In recent years, a strong resurgence of interest in the emergence of language from an evolutionary perspective has been helped by the convergence of approaches, methods, and ideas from several disciplines. The selection of contributions in this volume highlight scenarios of language origin and the prerequisites for a faculty of language based on biological, historical, social, cultural, and paleontological forays into the conditions that brought forth and favored language emergence, augmented by insights from sister disciplines. The chapters all reflect new speculation, discoveries and more refined research methods leading to a more focused understanding of the range of possibilities and how we might choose among them. There is much that we do not yet know, but the outlines of the path ahead are ever clearer.

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 Origin of Speech written by Peter F. MacNeilage and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the origin and evolution of speech. The human speech system is in a league of its own in the animal kingdom and its possession dwarfs most other evolutionary achievements. During every second of speech we unconsciously use about 225 distinct muscle actions. To investigate the evolutionary origins of this prodigious ability, Peter MacNeilage draws on work in linguistics, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and animal behavior. He puts forward a neo-Darwinian account of speech as a process of descent in which ancestral vocal capabilities became modified in response to natural selection pressures for more efficient communication. His proposals include the crucial observation that present-day infants learning to produce speech reveal constraints that were acting on our ancestors as they invented new words long ago. This important and original investigation integrates the latest research on modern speech capabilities, their acquisition, and their neurobiology, including the issues surrounding the cerebral hemispheric specialization for speech. Written in a clear style with minimal recourse to jargon the book will interest a wide range of readers in cognitive, neuro-, and evolutionary science, as well as all those seeking to understand the nature and evolution of speech and human communication.

Download or read book Grooming Gossip and the Evolution of Language written by Robin Ian MacDonald Dunbar and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here, the author examines gossip as a form of 'verbal grooming', and as a means of strengthening relationships. He challenges the idea that language developed during male activities such as hunting, and that it was actually amongst women that it evolved.

Download or read book Language in Our Brain written by Angela D. Friederici and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-11-16 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive account of the neurobiological basis of language, arguing that species-specific brain differences may be at the root of the human capacity for language. Language makes us human. It is an intrinsic part of us, although we seldom think about it. Language is also an extremely complex entity with subcomponents responsible for its phonological, syntactic, and semantic aspects. In this landmark work, Angela Friederici offers a comprehensive account of these subcomponents and how they are integrated. Tracing the neurobiological basis of language across brain regions in humans and other primate species, she argues that species-specific brain differences may be at the root of the human capacity for language. Friederici shows which brain regions support the different language processes and, more important, how these brain regions are connected structurally and functionally to make language processes that take place in milliseconds possible. She finds that one particular brain structure (a white matter dorsal tract), connecting syntax-relevant brain regions, is present only in the mature human brain and only weakly present in other primate brains. Is this the “missing link” that explains humans' capacity for language? Friederici describes the basic language functions and their brain basis; the language networks connecting different language-related brain regions; the brain basis of language acquisition during early childhood and when learning a second language, proposing a neurocognitive model of the ontogeny of language; and the evolution of language and underlying neural constraints. She finds that it is the information exchange between the relevant brain regions, supported by the white matter tract, that is the crucial factor in both language development and evolution.

Download or read book How Language Began The Story of Humanity s Greatest Invention written by Daniel L. Everett and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Buzzfeed Gift Guide Selection “Few books on the biological and cultural origin of humanity can be ranked as classics. I believe [this] will be one of them.” — Edward O. Wilson At the time of its publication, How Language Began received high acclaim for capturing the fascinating history of mankind’s most incredible creation. Deemed a “bombshell” linguist and “instant folk hero” by Tom Wolfe (Harper’s), Daniel L. Everett posits that the near- 7,000 languages that exist today are not only the product of one million years of evolution but also have allowed us to become Earth’s apex predator. Tracing 60,000 generations, Everett debunks long- held theories across a spectrum of disciplines to affi rm the idea that we are not born with an instinct for language. Woven with anecdotes of his nearly forty years of fi eldwork amongst Amazonian hunter- gatherers, this is a “completely enthralling” (Spectator) exploration of our humanity and a landmark study of what makes us human. “[An] ambitious text. . . . Everett’s amiable tone, and especially his captivating anecdotes . . . , will help the neophyte along.”— New York Times Book Review

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 Origins of Human Communication written by Michael Tomasello and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2010-08-13 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading expert on evolution and communication presents an empirically based theory of the evolutionary origins of human communication that challenges the dominant Chomskian view. Human communication is grounded in fundamentally cooperative, even shared, intentions. In this original and provocative account of the evolutionary origins of human communication, Michael Tomasello connects the fundamentally cooperative structure of human communication (initially discovered by Paul Grice) to the especially cooperative structure of human (as opposed to other primate) social interaction. Tomasello argues that human cooperative communication rests on a psychological infrastructure of shared intentionality (joint attention, common ground), evolved originally for collaboration and culture more generally. The basic motives of the infrastructure are helping and sharing: humans communicate to request help, inform others of things helpfully, and share attitudes as a way of bonding within the cultural group. These cooperative motives each created different functional pressures for conventionalizing grammatical constructions. Requesting help in the immediate you-and-me and here-and-now, for example, required very little grammar, but informing and sharing required increasingly complex grammatical devices. Drawing on empirical research into gestural and vocal communication by great apes and human infants (much of it conducted by his own research team), Tomasello argues further that humans' cooperative communication emerged first in the natural gestures of pointing and pantomiming. Conventional communication, first gestural and then vocal, evolved only after humans already possessed these natural gestures and their shared intentionality infrastructure along with skills of cultural learning for creating and passing along jointly understood communicative conventions. Challenging the Chomskian view that linguistic knowledge is innate, Tomasello proposes instead that the most fundamental aspects of uniquely human communication are biological adaptations for cooperative social interaction in general and that the purely linguistic dimensions of human communication are cultural conventions and constructions created by and passed along within particular cultural groups.