Language Evolution Paperback

Simon Kirby

How humans acquired language and how languages evolved are two of the most intriguing questions in contemporary scientific research. Answering them would throw new light on the process of evolution, the human brain, the structure of language, and what it means to be human. In this book researchers in cognitive science, anthropology, ethology, human biology, and linguistics say what they think about the origins of human language.

9780199244843

English

Oxford University Press

09-10-2003

414

Morten H. Christiansen

Simon Kirby

In the beginning there was no language. Now there is. Language Evolution describes the passage as a wonderful voyage of discovery. * Nurturing Potential * The evolutionary origins of language should intrigue anyone interested in the relationship of humans to other species. For them, Language Evolution will provide a useful starting point. * Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy, Science * Language Evolution is a brave attempt at a state-of-the-art survey of language origin research at the beginning of the millennium. * Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy, Science * This book offers the current states of the art on the subject of language evolution, covering just about every scientific discipline that has a stake in answering the questions it raises. * Pragmatics * Some time since we and the chimpanzees went our separate evolutionary ways, probably towards the very end of that 6 million year period, an innovation occurred whose only precedent was arguably the DNA code itself. Language arose in our ancestors, and there had been nothing like it. Of course other species communicate, many of them vocally, but none of this comes close to the open-ended, generative capacity, the huge vocabulary, the nuanced subtlety, the permanentrecordability of language. As an outsider, it is with real fascination that I have read this compendium. One of the merits of any book is its capacity to stimulate the reader to think beyond its confines. This, and other merits are possessed by Language Evolution in abundance. * Richard Dawkins *