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New Perspectives on the Origins of Language

2013-11-15 Language Arts & Disciplines
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Release : 2013-11-15
Genre : Language Arts & Disciplines
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 135/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis New Perspectives on the Origins of Language by : Claire Lefebvre

Download or read book New Perspectives on the Origins of Language written by Claire Lefebvre. This book was released on 2013-11-15. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The question of how language emerged is one of the most fascinating and difficult problems in science. In recent years, a strong resurgence of interest in the emergence of language from an evolutionary perspective has been helped by the convergence of approaches, methods, and ideas from several disciplines. The selection of contributions in this volume highlight scenarios of language origin and the prerequisites for a faculty of language based on biological, historical, social, cultural, and paleontological forays into the conditions that brought forth and favored language emergence, augmented by insights from sister disciplines. The chapters all reflect new speculation, discoveries and more refined research methods leading to a more focused understanding of the range of possibilities and how we might choose among them. There is much that we do not yet know, but the outlines of the path ahead are ever clearer.

Music and the Origins of Language

1995-06-15 History
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Release : 1995-06-15
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 071/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Music and the Origins of Language by : Downing A. Thomas

Download or read book Music and the Origins of Language written by Downing A. Thomas. This book was released on 1995-06-15. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study analyses reflections on music and considers ways in which it facilitates links between language and meaning.

Origins of Language

2005-02-17 Language Arts & Disciplines
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Release : 2005-02-17
Genre : Language Arts & Disciplines
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 607/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Origins of Language by : Sverker Johansson

Download or read book Origins of Language written by Sverker Johansson. This book was released on 2005-02-17. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sverker Johansson has written an unusual book on language origins, with its emphasis on empirical evidence rather than theory-building. This is a book for the student or researcher who prefers solid data and well-supported conclusions, over speculative scenarios. Much that has been written on the origins of language is characterized by hypothesizing largely unconstrained by evidence. But empirical data do exist, and the purpose of this book is to integrate and review the available evidence from all relevant disciplines, not only linguistics but also, e.g., neurology, primatology, paleoanthropology, and evolutionary biology. The evidence is then used to constrain the multitude of scenarios for language origins, demonstrating that many popular hypotheses are untenable. Among the issues covered: (1) Human evolutionary history, (2) Anatomical prerequisites for language, (3) Animal communication and ape "language", (4) Mind and language, (5) The role of gesture, (6) Innateness, (7) Selective advantage of language, (8) Proto-language.

The Social Origins of Language

2014-06-27 Language Arts & Disciplines
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Release : 2014-06-27
Genre : Language Arts & Disciplines
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 122/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Social Origins of Language by : Daniel Dor

Download or read book The Social Origins of Language written by Daniel Dor. This book was released on 2014-06-27. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers an exciting new perspective on the origins of language. Language is conceptualized as a collective invention, on the model of writing or the wheel, and the book places social and cultural dynamics at the centre of its evolution: language emerged and further developed in human communities already suffused with meaning and communication, mimesis, ritual, song and dance, alloparenting, new divisions of labour and revolutionary changes in social relations. The book thus challenges assumptions about the causal relations between genes, capacities, social communication and innovation: the biological capacities are taken to evolve incrementally on the basis of cognitive plasticity, in a process that recruits previous adaptations and fine-tunes them to serve novel communicative ends. Topics include the ability brought about by language to tell lies, that must have confronted our ancestors with new problems of public trust; the dynamics of social-cognitive co-evolution; the role of gesture and mimesis in linguistic communication; studies of how monkeys and apes express their feelings or thoughts; play, laughter, dance, song, ritual and other social displays among extant hunter-gatherers; the social nature of language acquisition and innovation; normativity and the emergence of linguistic norms; the interaction of language and emotions; and novel perspectives on the time-frame for language evolution. The contributors are leading international scholars from linguistics, anthropology, palaeontology, primatology, psychology, evolutionary biology, artificial intelligence, archaeology, and cognitive science.

The Evolution of Language

2010-04-01 Language Arts & Disciplines
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Release : 2010-04-01
Genre : Language Arts & Disciplines
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 06X/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Evolution of Language by : W. Tecumseh Fitch

Download or read book The Evolution of Language written by W. Tecumseh Fitch. This book was released on 2010-04-01. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Language, more than anything else, is what makes us human. It appears that no communication system of equivalent power exists elsewhere in the animal kingdom. Any normal human child will learn a language based on rather sparse data in the surrounding world, while even the brightest chimpanzee, exposed to the same environment, will not. Why not? How, and why, did language evolve in our species and not in others? Since Darwin's theory of evolution, questions about the origin of language have generated a rapidly-growing scientific literature, stretched across a number of disciplines, much of it directed at specialist audiences. The diversity of perspectives - from linguistics, anthropology, speech science, genetics, neuroscience and evolutionary biology - can be bewildering. Tecumseh Fitch cuts through this vast literature, bringing together its most important insights to explore one of the biggest unsolved puzzles of human history.

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