Diese Reihe taucht in die faszinierende Geschichte der menschlichen Sprache ein und erforscht ihren Ursprung und ihre evolutionäre Entwicklung. Sie bietet fundierte Einblicke, wie sich unsere einzigartigen Kommunikationssysteme über Jahrtausende hinweg entwickelt haben. Die Werke verbinden spezialisierte wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse mit zugänglicher Lesbarkeit und sprechen damit sowohl Fachleute als auch interessierte Laien aus Bereichen wie Linguistik, Biologie und Anthropologie an.
Leading primatologists, cognitive scientists, anthropologists, and linguists consider how language evolution can be understood by means of inference from the study of linked or analogous phenomena in language, animal behaviour, genetics, neurology, culture, and biology.
"In this engagingly written and broadly interdisciplinary book, Jim Hurford integrates findings from ethology and neuroscience with concepts from philosophy and linguistics to make an explicit and convincing case that animals have rich concepts, and thus that meaning predated language. This is a work of broad scope and significance." W. Tecumesh Fitch, Lecturer in Psychology, University of St. Andrews, from the bookjacket.
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 behaviour. 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. It 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.
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.
This book is the first to focus on the African origins of human language. It explores the origins of language and culture 250,000-150,000 years ago when modern humans evolved in Africa. Internationally renowned scholars address the fossil, genetic, and archaeological evidence and critically examine the ways it has been interpreted.
Denis Bouchard looks at how the human brain got the capacity for language and how language evolved. He argues that language is a system of signs and considers how these elements first came together in the brain. His account of language origins offers insights into language and to constructions that have defied decades of linguistic analysis.
This book addresses central questions in the evolution of language: where it came from; how and why it evolved; how it came to be culturally transmitted; and how languages diversified. It does so from the perspective of the latest work in linguistics, neuroscience, psychology, and computer science, and deploys the latest methods and theories to probe into the origins and subsequent development of the only species that has languages.
Constant exchange of information is integral to our societies. Jean-Louis Dessalles explores how this came into being. He develops a view of language as an instrument for conversation rather than mental representation and thought.
Traces language back to its earliest origins among our distant ape-like forbears several million years ago. This book examines the qualities of mind and brain needed to support the operations of language; investigates the first links between signs, sounds, and meanings; explores the beginnings and prehistories of vocabulary and grammar; and more.
A collection of writings by leading scholars in the field of language evolution, giving readable accounts of their theories on the origins of language and reflecting on the most current issues and debates.
This title considers the nature of pre and proto-linguistic communication, the internal and external triggers that led to its transformation into language, and whether and how language may be considered to have evolved after its inception.
Prominent linguists, cognitive scientists, archaeologists, primatologists, anthropologists, and natural scientists examine issues and advances in understanding language evolution, ranging from the co-evolution of language and music to the evolutionary biology of language.
