The Evolution of Language out of Pre-language
1st Edition
Published on 18. December 2002
X, 394 pages
978-90-272-9608-5 (ISBN)
Description
The contributors to this volume are linguists, psychologists, neuroscientists, primatologists, and anthropologists who share the assumption that language, just as mind and brain, are products of biological evolution. The rise of human language is not viewed as a serendipitous mutation that gave birth to a unique linguistic organ, but as a gradual, adaptive extension of pre-existing mental capacities and brain structures. The contributors carefully study brain mechanisms, diachronic change, language acquisition, and the parallels between cognitive and linguistic structures to weave a web of hypotheses and suggestive empirical findings on the origins of language and the connections of language to other human capacities. The chapters discuss brain pathways that support linguistic processing; origins of specific linguistic features in temporal and hierarchical structures of the mind; the possible co-evolution of language and the reasoning about mental states; and the aspects of language learning that may serve as models of evolutionary change.
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T. Givon | Bertram F. Malle
The Evolution of Language out of Pre-language
Book
12/2002
John Benjamins Publishing Co
€143.10
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Content
- The Evolution of Language out of Pre-language
- Editorial page
- Title page
- LCC page
- Contents
- Introduction
- Part 1 Language and the brain
- Chapter 1 The visual information-processing system as an evolutionary precursor of human language
- Notes
- References
- Chapter 2 Embodied meaning
- References
- Chapter 3 Missing links, issues and hypotheses in the evolutionary origin of language
- Notes
- References
- Part 2 Language and cognition
- Chapter 4 Sequentiality as the basis of constituent structure
- Notes
- References
- Chapter 5 The internal structure of the syllable
- References
- Chapter 6 On the origins of intersyllabic complexity
- References
- Chapter 7 On the pre-linguistic origins of language processing rates
- Appendix 1
- Appendix 2
- Appendix 3
- Appendix 4
- Appendix 5
- Appendix 7
- Appendix 8
- Appendix 9
- Appendix 10
- Appendix 11
- Appendix 12
- Note
- References
- Chapter 8 The clausal structure of linguistic and pre-linguistic behavior
- Notes
- References
- Part 3 Language and social cognition
- Chapter 9 The gradual emergence of language
- Notes
- References
- Chapter 10 The relation between language and theory of mind in development and evolution*
- Notes
- References
- Chapter 11 The rise of intentional understanding in human development
- References
- Part 4 Language development
- Chapter 12 The emergence of grammar in early child language
- Notes
- References
- Chapter 13 Why does exposure to language matter?
- Notes
- References
- Chapter 14 Getting a handle on language creation
- Notes
- References
- Chapter 15 Language evolution, acquisition and diachrony: Probing the parallels
- Notes
- References
- The series TYPOLOGICAL STUDIES IN LANGUAGE
