Biological Foundations And Origin Of Syntax

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Biological Foundations and Origin of Syntax

Author : Derek Bickerton
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262549123
Total Pages : 491 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis Biological Foundations and Origin of Syntax by : Derek Bickerton

Download or read book Biological Foundations and Origin of Syntax written by Derek Bickerton and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2023-09-19 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interdisciplinary perspectives on the evolutionary and biological roots of syntax, describing current research on syntax in fields ranging from linguistics to neurology. Syntax is arguably the most human-specific aspect of language. Despite the proto-linguistic capacities of some animals, syntax appears to be the last major evolutionary transition in humans that has some genetic basis. Yet what are the elements to a scenario that can explain such a transition? In this book, experts from linguistics, neurology and neurobiology, cognitive psychology, ecology and evolutionary biology, and computer modeling address this question. Unlike most previous work on the evolution of language, Biological Foundations and Origin of Syntax follows through on a growing consensus among researchers that language can be profitably separated into a number of related and interacting but largely autonomous functions, each of which may have a distinguishable evolutionary history and neurological base. The contributors argue that syntax is such a function.The book describes the current state of research on syntax in different fields, with special emphasis on areas in which the findings of particular disciplines might shed light on problems faced by other disciplines. It defines areas where consensus has been established with regard to the nature, infrastructure, and evolution of the syntax of natural languages; summarizes and evaluates contrasting approaches in areas that remain controversial; and suggests lines for future research to resolve at least some of these disputed issues. Contributors Andrea Baronchelli, Derek Bickerton, Dorothy V. M. Bishop, Denis Bouchard, Robert Boyd, Jens Brauer, Ted Briscoe, David Caplan, Nick Chater, Morten H. Christiansen, Terrence W.Deacon, Francesco d'Errico, Anna Fedor, Julia Fischer, Angela D. Friederici, Tom Givón, Thomas Griffiths, Balázs Gulyás, Peter Hagoort, Austin Hilliard, James R. Hurford, Péter Ittzés, Gerhard Jäger, Herbert Jäger, Edith Kaan, Simon Kirby, Natalia L. Komarova, Tatjana Nazir, Frederick Newmeyer, Kazuo Okanoya, Csaba Plèh, Peter J. Richerson, Luigi Rizzi, Wolf Singer, Mark Steedman, Luc Steels, Szabolcs Számadó, Eörs Szathmáry, Maggie Tallerman, Jochen Triesch, Stephanie Ann White

Biological Foundations of Language

Author : Eric H. Lenneberg
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 518 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Biological Foundations of Language by : Eric H. Lenneberg

Download or read book Biological Foundations of Language written by Eric H. Lenneberg and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 1967-01-15 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The study of language is pertinent to many fields of inquiry. It is relevant to psychology, anthropology, philosophy, and medicine. It encroaches upon the humanities, as well as upon the social and natural sciences. We may pursue investigations that concentrate on what man has done with or to specific languages; or we may regard language as a natural phenomenon- an aspect of his biological nature, to be studied in the same manner as, for instance, his anatomy. Which of these approaches is to be chosen is entirely a matter of personal curiosity. This book is concerned with the biological aspects of language." -- Preface

Syntactic Structures

Author : Noam Chomsky
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3112316002
Total Pages : 120 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (123 download)

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Book Synopsis Syntactic Structures by : Noam Chomsky

Download or read book Syntactic Structures written by Noam Chomsky and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-05-18 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No detailed description available for "Syntactic Structures".

New Perspectives on the Origins of Language

Author : Claire Lefebvre
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9027271135
Total Pages : 600 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (272 download)

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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 and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2013-11-15 with total page 600 pages. 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.

Language, Biology and Cognition

Author : Prakash Mondal
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 303023715X
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (32 download)

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Book Synopsis Language, Biology and Cognition by : Prakash Mondal

Download or read book Language, Biology and Cognition written by Prakash Mondal and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-07-17 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the relationship between human language and biology in order to determine whether the biological foundations of language can offer deep insights into the nature and form of language and linguistic cognition. Challenging the assumption in biolinguistics and neurolinguistics that natural language and linguistic cognition can be reconciled with neurobiology, the author argues that reducing representation to cognitive systems and cognitive systems to neural populations is reductive, leading to inferences about the cognitive basis of linguistic performance based on assuming (false) dependencies. Instead, he finds that biological implementations of cognitive rather than the biological structures themselves, are the driver behind linguistic structures. In particular, this book argues that the biological roots of language are useful only for an understanding of the emergence of linguistic capacity as a whole, but ultimately irrelevant to understanding the character of language. Offering an antidote to the current thinking embracing ‘biologism’ in linguistic sciences, it will be of interest to readers in linguistics, the cognitive and brain sciences, and the points at which these disciplines converge with the computer sciences.

Syntax and Variation

Author : Leonie M.E.A. Cornips
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9027294380
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (272 download)

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Book Synopsis Syntax and Variation by : Leonie M.E.A. Cornips

Download or read book Syntax and Variation written by Leonie M.E.A. Cornips and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2005-06-22 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The papers in this collection share a common interest in the empirical, theoretical and meta-theoretical aspects of the ‘internal-external’ (‘formal-functional’) debate in linguistic theory. The primary aim of this volume is to initiate cooperation between internationally renowned generative and variationist linguists with a view to developing an innovative and more cohesive approach to syntactic variation. The present volume contains treatments incorporating the analysis of external factors into accounts focusing on the internal linguistic conditioning of syntactic variation and change cross-linguistically. As such, it offers novel approaches to three key areas of current linguistic debate, viz. (1) Methodological practices, (2) Theoretical applications and (3) Modularity. The volume is, therefore, an important achievement for the progress of linguistic theory more generally and it is an even more crucial milestone in the coming-of-age of ‘Socio-Syntax’ as a discipline in its own right.

The Nature and Origin of Language

Author : Denis Bouchard
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199681627
Total Pages : 402 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (996 download)

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Book Synopsis The Nature and Origin of Language by : Denis Bouchard

Download or read book The Nature and Origin of Language written by Denis Bouchard and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-10 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

The Social Origins of Language

Author : Daniel Dor
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199665338
Total Pages : 452 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (996 download)

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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 and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Neurobiology of human language and its evolution: Primate and Nonprimate Perspectives

Author : Constance Scharff
Publisher : Frontiers E-books
ISBN 13 : 2889191117
Total Pages : 149 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (891 download)

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Book Synopsis Neurobiology of human language and its evolution: Primate and Nonprimate Perspectives by : Constance Scharff

Download or read book Neurobiology of human language and its evolution: Primate and Nonprimate Perspectives written by Constance Scharff and published by Frontiers E-books. This book was released on with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The evolution of human language has been discussed for centuries from different perspectives. Linguistic theory has proposed grammar as a core part of human language that has to be considered in this context. Recent advances in neurosciences have allowed us to take a new neurobiological look on the similarities and dissimilarities of cognitive capacities and their neural basis across both closely and distantly related species. A couple of decades ago the comparisons were mainly drawn between human and non-human primates, investigating the cytoarchitecture of particular brain areas and their structural connectivity. Moreover, comparative studies were conducted with respect to their ability to process grammars of different complexity. So far the available data suggest that non-human primates are able to learn simple probabilistic grammars, but not hierarchically structured complex grammars. The human brain, which easily learns both grammars, differs from the non-human brain (among others) in how two language-relevant brain regions (Broca’s area and superior temporal cortex) are connected structurally. Whether the more dominant dorsal pathway in humans compared to non-human primates is causally related to this behavioral difference is an issue of current debate. Ontogenetic findings suggest at least a correlation between the maturation of the dorsal pathway and the behavior to process syntactically complex structures, although a causal prove is still not available. Thus the neural basis of complex grammar processing in humans remains to be defined. More recently it has been reported that songbirds are also able to distinguish between sound sequences reflecting complex grammar. Interestingly, songbirds learn to sing by imitating adult song in a process not unlike language development in children. Moreover, the neural circuits supporting this behavior in songbirds bear anatomical and functional similarities to those in humans. In adult humans the fiber tract connecting the auditory cortex and motor cortex dorsally is known to be involved in the repetition of spoken language. This pathway is present already at birth and is taken to play a major role during language acquisition. In songbirds, detailed information exist concerning the interaction of auditory, motor and cortical-basal ganglia processing during song learning, and present a rich substrate for comparative studies. The scope of the Research Topic is to bring together contributions of researchers from different fields, who investigate grammar processing in humans, non-human primates and songbirds with the aim to find answers to the question of what constitutes the neurobiological basis of grammar learning. Open questions are: Which brain networks are relevant for grammar learning? Is there more than one dorsal pathway (one from temporal cortex to motor cortex and one to Broca’s area) and if so what are their functions? Has the ability to process sequences of a given hierarchical complexity evolved in different phylogenetic lines (birds, primates, other vocal production learners such as bats)? Is the presence of a sensory-to-motor circuit in humans a precondition for development of a dorsal pathway between the temporal cortex and Broca’s area? What role do subcortical structures (Basal Ganglia) play in vocal and grammar learning?

The Evolution of Language

Author : Erica A Cartmill
Publisher : World Scientific
ISBN 13 : 9814603643
Total Pages : 592 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (146 download)

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Book Synopsis The Evolution of Language by : Erica A Cartmill

Download or read book The Evolution of Language written by Erica A Cartmill and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2014-03-21 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume comprises refereed papers and abstracts of the 10th International Conference on the Evolution of Language (EVOLANGX), held in Vienna on 14–17th April 2014. As the leading international conference in the field, the biennial EVOLANG meeting is characterised by an invigorating, multidisciplinary approach to the origins and evolution of human language, and brings together researchers from many subject areas, including anthropology, archaeology, biology, cognitive science, computer science, genetics, linguistics, neuroscience, palaeontology, primatology and psychology. For this 10th conference, the proceedings will include a special perspectives section featuring prominent researchers reflecting on the history of the conference and its impact on the field of language evolution since the inaugural EVOLANG conference in 1996. Contents:Diachronic Processes in Language as Signaling Under Conflicting Interests (Christopher Ahern and Robin Clark)Syntactic Development in Phenotypic Space (Lluís Barceló-Coblijn and Antoni Gomila Benejam)Linguistic Animals: Understanding Language Through a Comparative Approach (Piera Filippi)Social Interaction Influences the Evolution of Cognitive Biases for Language (Seán G Roberts, Bill Thompson and Kenny Smith)Symbol Extension and Meaning Generation in Cultural Evolution for Displaced Communication (Kaori Tamura and Takashi Hashimoto)The Origins of Combinatorial Communication (Richard A Blythe and Thomas C Scott-Phillips)Social Origins of Rhythm? Synchrony and Temporal Regularity in Human Vocalization (Daniel L Bowling, Christian T Herbst and W Tecumseh Fitch)The Effect of Pitch Enhancement on Spoken Language Acquisition (Piera Filippi, Bruno Gingras and W Tecumseh Fitch)Bow-and-Arrow Technology: Mapping Human Cognition and Perhaps Language Evolution (Alexandra Regina Kratschmer, Miriam Noël Haidle and Marlize Lombard)The Cognitive Underspinnings of Metaphor as the Driving Force of Language Evolution (Andrew D M Smith and Stefan H Höfler)Model Fitting and Prediction for Language Evolution (Bill Thompson and Vanessa Ferdinand)and other papers Readership: Graduate students, academics and researchers working on the evolution of language, artificial intelligence, genetics and psychology. Key Features:Keywords:Evolution;Language;Evolang;Origin;Protolanguage

Foundations of Language: A Biological Paradigm

Author : Ashraf Bhat
Publisher : GRIN Verlag
ISBN 13 : 3656026637
Total Pages : 15 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (56 download)

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Book Synopsis Foundations of Language: A Biological Paradigm by : Ashraf Bhat

Download or read book Foundations of Language: A Biological Paradigm written by Ashraf Bhat and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2011-10-11 with total page 15 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many people have argued that the evolution of the human language faculty cannot be explained by Darwinian natural selection. Chomsky and Gould have suggested that language may have evolved as the by-product of selection for other abilities or as a consequence of as-yet unknown laws of growth and form. Others have argued that a biological specialization for grammar is incompatible with every tenet of Darwinian theory, that it shows no genetic variation, could not exist in any intermediate forms, confers no selective advantage, and would require more evolutionary time and genomic space than is available. We examine these arguments and show that they depend on inaccurate assumptions about biology or language or both. Evolutionary theory offers clear criteria for when a trait should be attributed to natural selection: complex design for some function, and the absence of alternative processes capable of explaining such complexity. Human language meets this criterion: grammar is a complex mechanism tailored to the transmission of propositional structures through a serial interface. Autonomous and arbitrary grammatical phenomena have been offered as counterexamples to the position that language is an adaptation, but this reasoning is unsound: communication protocols depend on arbitrary conventions that are adaptive as long as they are shared. Consequently, language acquisition in the child should systematically differ from language evolution in the species and attempts to analogize them are misleading. Reviewing other arguments and data, we conclude that there is every reason to believe that a specialization for grammar evolved by a conventional neo-Darwinian process. All human societies have language. As far as we know they always did; language was not invented by some groups and spread to others like agriculture or the alphabet. All languages are complex computational systems employing the same basic kinds of rules and representations, with no notable correlation with technological progress: the grammars of industrial societies are no more complex than the grammars of hunter-gatherers. Within societies, individual humans are proficient language users regardless of intelligence, social status, or level of education. Children are fluent speakers of complex grammatical sentences by the age of three, without benefit of formal instruction. [...]

Experiments in Focus

Author : Sam Featherston
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110623099
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (16 download)

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Book Synopsis Experiments in Focus by : Sam Featherston

Download or read book Experiments in Focus written by Sam Featherston and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents new and cutting-edge research on the question of how we parse, interpret and understand language in more complex discourse settings. The challenge is to find empirical evidence on how information structure and semantic processing are related. Comprehensible answers are provided by showing how syntax, phonology, semantics and pragmatics interact and how they influence semantic processing and interpretation. The analysis of core information structural concepts that contribute to processing such as focus and contrast, the specific discourse status of referents that add to the common ground, context dependency and markedness as well as prosodic prominence and givenness marking has added new and convincing evidence to the research of information structure and semantic processing.

Syntactic Complexity

Author : T. Givón
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9027290148
Total Pages : 561 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (272 download)

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Book Synopsis Syntactic Complexity by : T. Givón

Download or read book Syntactic Complexity written by T. Givón and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2009-04-22 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Complex hierarchic syntax is considered one of the hallmarks of human language. The highest level of syntactic complexity, recursive-embedded clauses, has been singled out by some for a special status as the apex of the uniquely-human language faculty – evolutionary but somehow immune to adaptive selection. This volume, coming out of a symposium held at Rice University in March 2008, tackles syntactic complexity from multiple developmental perspectives. We take it for granted that grammar is an adaptive instrument of communication, assembled upon the pre-existing platform of pre-linguistic cognition. Most of the papers in the volume deal with the two grand developmental trends of human language: diachrony, the communal enterprise directly responsible for fashioning synchronic morpho-syntax; and ontogeny, the individual endeavor directly responsible for the acquisition of competent grammatical performance. The genesis of syntactic complexity along these two developmental trends is considered alongside with the cognition and neurology of grammar and of syntactic complexity, and the evolutionary relevance of diachrony, ontogeny and pidginization is argued on general bio-evolutionary grounds. Lastly, several of the contributions to the volume suggest that recursive embedding is not in itself an adaptive target, but rather the by-product of two distinct adaptive gambits: the recruitment of conjoined clauses as modal operators on other clauses and the subsequent condensation of paratactic into syntactic structures.

The Origins of Grammar

Author : James R. Hurford
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199207879
Total Pages : 808 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (992 download)

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Book Synopsis The Origins of Grammar by : James R. Hurford

Download or read book The Origins of Grammar written by James R. Hurford and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 808 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second in James Hurford's acclaimed two-volume exploration of the biological evolution of language explores the evolutionary and cultural preconditions and consequences of humanity's great leap into language.

The Routledge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics

Author : Wen Xu
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351034693
Total Pages : 792 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (51 download)

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Book Synopsis The Routledge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics by : Wen Xu

Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics written by Wen Xu and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-06-04 with total page 792 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics provides a comprehensive introduction and essential reference work to cognitive linguistics. It encompasses a wide range of perspectives and approaches, covering all the key areas of cognitive linguistics and drawing on interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research in pragmatics, discourse analysis, biolinguistics, ecolinguistics, evolutionary linguistics, neuroscience, language pedagogy, and translation studies. The forty-three chapters, written by international specialists in the field, cover four major areas: • Basic theories and hypotheses, including cognitive semantics, cognitive grammar, construction grammar, frame semantics, natural semantic metalanguage, and word grammar; • Central topics, including embodiment, image schemas, categorization, metaphor and metonymy, construal, iconicity, motivation, constructionalization, intersubjectivity, grounding, multimodality, cognitive pragmatics, cognitive poetics, humor, and linguistic synaesthesia, among others; • Interfaces between cognitive linguistics and other areas of linguistic study, including cultural linguistics, linguistic typology, figurative language, signed languages, gesture, language acquisition and pedagogy, translation studies, and digital lexicography; • New directions in cognitive linguistics, demonstrating the relevance of the approach to social, diachronic, neuroscientific, biological, ecological, multimodal, and quantitative studies. The Routledge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics is an indispensable resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students, and for all researchers working in this area.

Language Evolution

Author : Rudolf Botha
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1316483444
Total Pages : 329 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (164 download)

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Book Synopsis Language Evolution by : Rudolf Botha

Download or read book Language Evolution written by Rudolf Botha and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-02 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can we unravel the evolution of language, given that there is no direct evidence about it? Rudolf Botha addresses this intriguing question in his fascinating new book. Inferences can be drawn about language evolution from a range of other phenomena, serving as windows into this prehistoric process. These include shell-beads, fossil skulls and ancestral brains, modern pidgin and creole languages, homesign systems and emergent sign languages, modern motherese, language use of modern hunter-gatherers, first language acquisition, similarities between language and music, and comparative animal behaviour. The first systematic analysis of the Windows Approach, it will be of interest to students and researchers in many disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, palaeontology and primatology, as well as anyone interested in how language evolved.

The Social Origins of Language

Author : Robert M. Seyfarth
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 140088814X
Total Pages : 179 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis The Social Origins of Language by : Robert M. Seyfarth

Download or read book The Social Origins of Language written by Robert M. Seyfarth and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-12-05 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How human language evolved from the need for social communication The origins of human language remain hotly debated. Despite growing appreciation of cognitive and neural continuity between humans and other animals, an evolutionary account of human language—in its modern form—remains as elusive as ever. The Social Origins of Language provides a novel perspective on this question and charts a new path toward its resolution. In the lead essay, Robert Seyfarth and Dorothy Cheney draw on their decades-long pioneering research on monkeys and baboons in the wild to show how primates use vocalizations to modulate social dynamics. They argue that key elements of human language emerged from the need to decipher and encode complex social interactions. In other words, social communication is the biological foundation upon which evolution built more complex language. Seyfarth and Cheney’s argument serves as a jumping-off point for responses by John McWhorter, Ljiljana Progovac, Jennifer E. Arnold, Benjamin Wilson, Christopher I. Petkov and Peter Godfrey-Smith, each of whom draw on their respective expertise in linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology. Michael Platt provides an introduction, Seyfarth and Cheney a concluding essay. Ultimately, The Social Origins of Language offers thought-provoking viewpoints on how human language evolved.