Download or read book Darwinism Tested by the Science of Language written by August Schleicher and published by . This book was released on 1869 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Darwinism Tested by Language written by Sir Frederick Bateman and published by . This book was released on 1877 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Darwinism and the Linguistic Image written by Stephen G. Alter and published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This book was released on 2003-03-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the nineteenth century, philology—especially comparative philology—made impressive gains as a discipline, thus laying the foundation for the modern field of linguistics. In Darwinism and the Linguistic Image, Stephen G. Alter examines how comparative philology provided a genealogical model of language that Darwin, as well as other scientists and language scholars, used to construct rhetorical parallels with the common-descent theory of evolution.
Download or read book Darwinian Biolinguistics written by Antonino Pennisi and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-12-15 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book proposes a radically evolutionary approach to biolinguistics that consists in considering human language as a form of species-specific intelligence entirely embodied in the corporeal structures of Homo sapiens. The book starts with a historical reconstruction of two opposing biolinguistic models: the Chomskian Biolinguistic Model (CBM) and the Darwinian Biolinguistic Model (DBM). The second part compares the two models and develops into a complete reconsideration of the traditional biolinguistic issues in an evolutionary perspective, highlighting their potential influence on the paradigm of biologically oriented cognitive science. The third part formulates the philosophical, evolutionary and experimental basis of an extended theory of linguistic performativity within a naturalistic perspective of pragmatics of verbal language. The book proposes a model in which the continuity between human and non-human primates is linked to the gradual development of the articulatory and neurocerebral structures, and to a kind of prelinguistic pragmatics which characterizes the common nature of social learning. In contrast, grammatical, semantic and pragmatic skills that mark the learning of historical-natural languages are seen as a rapid acceleration of cultural evolution. The book makes clear that this acceleration will not necessarily favour the long-term adaptations for Homo sapiens.
Download or read book On looking into words and beyond written by Claire Bowern and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2017-05-18 with total page 629 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While linguistic theory is in continual flux as progress is made in our ability to understand the structure and function of language, one constant has always been the central role of the word. On looking into words is a wide-ranging volume spanning current research into word-based morphology, morphosyntax, the phonology-morphology interface, and related areas of theoretical and empirical linguistics. The 26 papers that constitute this volume extend morphological and grammatical theory to signed as well as spoken language, to diachronic as well as synchronic evidence, and to birdsong as well as human language.
Download or read book Darwinism Tested by Language written by Sir Frederick Bateman and published by Hardpress Publishing. This book was released on 2012-01 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.
Download or read book Darwinism Tested by Language written by Sir Frederick Bateman and published by . This book was released on 1878 with total page 8 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Evolution Of Human Languages written by John A. Hawkins and published by Westview Press. This book was released on 1992-10-20 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This proceedings volume from a workshop by the same name sponsored by the Santa Fe Institute in August, 1989, covers a range of disciplines and subdisciplines of relevance to linguistics, phonetics, psycholinguistics, cognitive science, sociolinguistics, archaeological and anthropological linguistics, neuroanatomy, biology, and physics.
Download or read book Lingua Ex Machina written by William H. Calvin and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A neuroscientist and a linguist show how evolution could have given rise to structured language. A machine for language? Certainly, say the neurophysiologists, busy studying the language specializations of the human brain and trying to identify their evolutionary antecedents. Linguists such as Noam Chomsky talk about machinelike "modules" in the brain for syntax, arguing that language is more an instinct (a complex behavior triggered by simple environmental stimuli) than an acquired skill like riding a bicycle. But structured language presents the same evolutionary problems as feathered forelimbs for flight: you need a lot of specializations to fly even a little bit. How do you get them, if evolution has no foresight and the intermediate stages do not have intermediate payoffs? Some say that the Darwinian scheme for gradual species self-improvement cannot explain our most valued human capability, the one that sets us so far above the apes, language itself. William Calvin and Derek Bickerton suggest that other evolutionary developments, not directly related to language, allowed language to evolve in a way that eventually promoted a Chomskian syntax. They compare these intermediate behaviors to the curb-cuts originally intended for wheelchair users. Their usefulness was soon discovered by users of strollers, shopping carts, rollerblades, and so on. The authors argue that reciprocal altruism and ballistic movement planning were "curb-cuts" that indirectly promoted the formation of structured language. Written in the form of a dialogue set in Bellagio, Italy, Lingua ex Machina presents an engaging challenge to those who view the human capacity for language as a winner-take-all war between Chomsky and Darwin.
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 Darwinism Tested by the Science of Language written by August Schleicher and published by . This book was released on 1877 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Descent of Man written by Charles Darwin and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007-11-27 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most accessible edition ever published of Darwin's incendiary classic, edited by "as fine a science essayist as we have" (New York Times) The Descent of Man, Darwin's second landmark work on evolutionary theory (following The Origin of the Species), marked a turning point in the history of science with its modern vision of human nature as the product of evolution. Darwin argued that the noblest features of humans, such as language and morality, were the result of the same natural processes that produced iris petals and scorpion tails. To convey the revolutionary importance of this groundbreaking book, renowned evolutionary science writer Carl Zimmer edited this special abridged edition—made up of nine excerpts, each one representing one of Darwin's major themes—and wrote illuminating introductions to each section, as well as an overall introduction. Zimmer brilliantly places Darwin's basic ideas in the context of the current understanding of human nature and twenty-first-century DNA research. By accessibly presenting Darwin's thinking to a modern readership, Zimmer eloquently demonstrates Darwin's ever-increasing relevance and amazing scientific insight.
Download or read book Darwinism and Other Essays written by John Fiske and published by . This book was released on 1879 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Writings of John Fiske Darwinism and other essays written by John Fiske and published by . This book was released on 1902 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Reception of Darwinian Evolution in Britain 1859 1909 written by Martin Hewitt and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-10-20 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Reception of Darwinian Evolution in Britain, 1859-1909: Darwinism's Generations uses the impact of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) in the 50 years after its publication to demonstrate the effectiveness of a generational framework for understanding the cultural and intellectual history of Britain in the nineteenth century. It challenges conventional notions of the 'Darwinian Revolution' by examining how people from across all sections of society actually responded to Darwin's writings. Drawing on the opinions and interventions of over 2,000 Victorians, drawn from an exceptionally wide range of archival and printed sources, it argues that the spread of Darwinian belief was slower, more complicated, more stratified by age, and ultimately shaped far more powerfully by divergent generational responses, than has previously been recognised. In doing so, it makes a number of important contributions. It offers by far the richest and most comprehensive account to date of how contemporaries came to terms with the intellectual and emotional shocks of evolutionary theory. It makes a compelling case for taking proper account of age as a fundamental historical dynamic, and for the powerful generational patternings of the effects that age produced. It demonstrates the extent to which the most common sub-periodisation of the Victorian period are best understood not merely as constituted by the exigencies of events, but are also formed by the shifting balance generational influence. Taken together these insights present a significant challenge to the ways historians currently approach the task of describing the nature and experience of historical change, and have fundamental implications for our current conceptions of the shape and pace of historical time.
Download or read book The Descent of Man written by Charles Darwin and published by . This book was released on 1897 with total page 768 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Was Hitler a Darwinian written by Robert J. Richards and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-11-06 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In tracing the history of Darwin’s accomplishment and the trajectory of evolutionary theory during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most scholars agree that Darwin introduced blind mechanism into biology, thus banishing moral values from the understanding of nature. According to the standard interpretation, the principle of survival of the fittest has rendered human behavior, including moral behavior, ultimately selfish. Few doubt that Darwinian theory, especially as construed by the master’s German disciple, Ernst Haeckel, inspired Hitler and led to Nazi atrocities. In this collection of essays, Robert J. Richards argues that this orthodox view is wrongheaded. A close historical examination reveals that Darwin, in more traditional fashion, constructed nature with a moral spine and provided it with a goal: man as a moral creature. The book takes up many other topics—including the character of Darwin’s chief principles of natural selection and divergence, his dispute with Alfred Russel Wallace over man’s big brain, the role of language in human development, his relationship to Herbert Spencer, how much his views had in common with Haeckel’s, and the general problem of progress in evolution. Moreover, Richards takes a forceful stand on the timely issue of whether Darwin is to blame for Hitler’s atrocities. Was Hitler a Darwinian? is intellectual history at its boldest.
