Becoming Human

Introduction
Section one. Evolutionary precursors
Chapter 1. Monkeys' mirror neurons
Chapter 2. Chimpanzees and the visual field of the conspecific
Section two. The basic human ability
Chapter 3. The three modes of processing the eyes of others
Chapter 4. Pointing gestures
Chapter 5. Four-hand co-operative actions and children's interpersonal co-ordination games
Section three. Specifying some necessary requisites of language
Chapter 6. Saussurean parity and the perception of a radically not-own self
Chapter 7. About evocation
Chapter 8. Symbolic play: Developments in the simulatory centre
Chapter 9. From symbolic play to linguistic symbol
Section four. The origin of predication and syntax
Chapter 10. From the general exposition to the crucial requisite achieved by the protodeclarative
Chapter 11. Toward the original perception of false beliefs of others: The importance of the learned sign
Chapter 12. Between motor learning and the perception of beliefs of others: The crucial role of the protodeclarative
Section five. Pregrammatical, theme-rheme syntax: Revisiting Frege and Vygotsky
Chapter 13. From beliefs of others to communicative predication
Chapter 14. Revisiting Frege: How can a predication be at one and the same time true and not redundant?
Chapter 15. Communicative functions, Vygotskian 'pure predicate' and conceptual semantics: Various questions about predication
Chapter 16. Connecting with the concepts of theme (or topic) and rheme (or comment)
Section six. From original to present-day predication: Links and grammatical syntax
Chapter 17. Meaning and the different types of link
Chapter 18. Expressive speech and syntactic links: A hypothesis on the historic origins of those links, and on some other questions, along the way
Chapter 19. Historical grammaticalisation: The answers are lacking, but the questions are good
Section seven. Syntax beyond predication
Chapter 20. Interrogative communication
Chapter 21. Toward complex syntax: The crucial role of reported speech
Preliminary conclusion and the main thesis recapitulated
References
Glossary
Author index
Subject index