Language And Species

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Language & Species

Author : Derek Bickerton
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022622094X
Total Pages : 311 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (262 download)

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Book Synopsis Language & Species by : Derek Bickerton

Download or read book Language & Species written by Derek Bickerton and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-12-01 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Language and Species presents the most detailed and well-documented scenario to date of the origins of language. Drawing on "living linguistic fossils" such as "ape talk," the "two-word" stage of small children, and pidgin languages, and on recent discoveries in paleoanthropology, Bickerton shows how a primitive "protolanguage" could have offered Homo erectus a novel ecological niche. He goes on to demonstrate how this protolanguage could have developed into the languages we speak today. "You are drawn into [Bickerton's] appreciation of the dominant role language plays not only in what we say, but in what we think and, therefore, what we are."—Robert Wright, New York Times Book Review "The evolution of language is a fascinating topic, and Bickerton's Language and Species is the best introduction we have."—John C. Marshall, Nature

The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain

Author : Terrence W. Deacon
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393343022
Total Pages : 532 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (933 download)

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Book Synopsis The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain by : Terrence W. Deacon

Download or read book The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain written by Terrence W. Deacon and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1998-04-17 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A work of enormous breadth, likely to pleasantly surprise both general readers and experts."—New York Times Book Review This revolutionary book provides fresh answers to long-standing questions of human origins and consciousness. Drawing on his breakthrough research in comparative neuroscience, Terrence Deacon offers a wealth of insights into the significance of symbolic thinking: from the co-evolutionary exchange between language and brains over two million years of hominid evolution to the ethical repercussions that followed man's newfound access to other people's thoughts and emotions. Informing these insights is a new understanding of how Darwinian processes underlie the brain's development and function as well as its evolution. In contrast to much contemporary neuroscience that treats the brain as no more or less than a computer, Deacon provides a new clarity of vision into the mechanism of mind. It injects a renewed sense of adventure into the experience of being human.

Chasing Doctor Dolittle

Author : C. N. Slobodchikoff
Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 031261179X
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (126 download)

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Book Synopsis Chasing Doctor Dolittle by : C. N. Slobodchikoff

Download or read book Chasing Doctor Dolittle written by C. N. Slobodchikoff and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2012-11-27 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses how animals are capable of interacting intelligently through vocal and physical methods, drawing on work with prairie dogs to present evidence of animal communication methods and how they can be imitated by human researchers.

Language in Our Brain

Author : Angela D. Friederici
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262036924
Total Pages : 300 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (62 download)

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Book Synopsis Language in Our Brain by : Angela D. Friederici

Download or read book Language in Our Brain written by Angela D. Friederici and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-11-16 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive account of the neurobiological basis of language, arguing that species-specific brain differences may be at the root of the human capacity for language. Language makes us human. It is an intrinsic part of us, although we seldom think about it. Language is also an extremely complex entity with subcomponents responsible for its phonological, syntactic, and semantic aspects. In this landmark work, Angela Friederici offers a comprehensive account of these subcomponents and how they are integrated. Tracing the neurobiological basis of language across brain regions in humans and other primate species, she argues that species-specific brain differences may be at the root of the human capacity for language. Friederici shows which brain regions support the different language processes and, more important, how these brain regions are connected structurally and functionally to make language processes that take place in milliseconds possible. She finds that one particular brain structure (a white matter dorsal tract), connecting syntax-relevant brain regions, is present only in the mature human brain and only weakly present in other primate brains. Is this the “missing link” that explains humans' capacity for language? Friederici describes the basic language functions and their brain basis; the language networks connecting different language-related brain regions; the brain basis of language acquisition during early childhood and when learning a second language, proposing a neurocognitive model of the ontogeny of language; and the evolution of language and underlying neural constraints. She finds that it is the information exchange between the relevant brain regions, supported by the white matter tract, that is the crucial factor in both language development and evolution.

Roots of language

Author : Derek Bickerton
Publisher : Language Science Press
ISBN 13 : 3946234089
Total Pages : 300 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (462 download)

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Book Synopsis Roots of language by : Derek Bickerton

Download or read book Roots of language written by Derek Bickerton and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2016-02-05 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The Language Animal

Author : Charles Taylor
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674970276
Total Pages : 364 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (749 download)

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Book Synopsis The Language Animal by : Charles Taylor

Download or read book The Language Animal written by Charles Taylor and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-14 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Sources of the Self to A Secular Age, Charles Taylor has shown how we create ways of being, as individuals and as a society. Here, he demonstrates that language is at the center of this generative process. Language does not merely describe; it constitutes meaning, and the shared practice of speech shapes human experience.

Why Only Us

Author : Robert C. Berwick
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262533499
Total Pages : 229 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis Why Only Us by : Robert C. Berwick

Download or read book Why Only Us written by Robert C. Berwick and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-05-12 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Berwick and Chomsky draw on recent developments in linguistic theory to offer an evolutionary account of language and humans' remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire it. “A loosely connected collection of four essays that will fascinate anyone interested in the extraordinary phenomenon of language.” —New York Review of Books We are born crying, but those cries signal the first stirring of language. Within a year or so, infants master the sound system of their language; a few years after that, they are engaging in conversations. This remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire any human language—“the language faculty”—raises important biological questions about language, including how it has evolved. This book by two distinguished scholars—a computer scientist and a linguist—addresses the enduring question of the evolution of language. Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky explain that until recently the evolutionary question could not be properly posed, because we did not have a clear idea of how to define “language” and therefore what it was that had evolved. But since the Minimalist Program, developed by Chomsky and others, we know the key ingredients of language and can put together an account of the evolution of human language and what distinguishes us from all other animals. Berwick and Chomsky discuss the biolinguistic perspective on language, which views language as a particular object of the biological world; the computational efficiency of language as a system of thought and understanding; the tension between Darwin's idea of gradual change and our contemporary understanding about evolutionary change and language; and evidence from nonhuman animals, in particular vocal learning in songbirds.

Human Language

Author : Peter Hagoort
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262042630
Total Pages : 753 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (62 download)

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Book Synopsis Human Language by : Peter Hagoort

Download or read book Human Language written by Peter Hagoort and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-10-29 with total page 753 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique overview of the human language faculty at all levels of organization. Language is not only one of the most complex cognitive functions that we command, it is also the aspect of the mind that makes us uniquely human. Research suggests that the human brain exhibits a language readiness not found in the brains of other species. This volume brings together contributions from a range of fields to examine humans' language capacity from multiple perspectives, analyzing it at genetic, neurobiological, psychological, and linguistic levels. In recent decades, advances in computational modeling, neuroimaging, and genetic sequencing have made possible new approaches to the study of language, and the contributors draw on these developments. The book examines cognitive architectures, investigating the functional organization of the major language skills; learning and development trajectories, summarizing the current understanding of the steps and neurocognitive mechanisms in language processing; evolutionary and other preconditions for communication by means of natural language; computational tools for modeling language; cognitive neuroscientific methods that allow observations of the human brain in action, including fMRI, EEG/MEG, and others; the neural infrastructure of language capacity; the genome's role in building and maintaining the language-ready brain; and insights from studying such language-relevant behaviors in nonhuman animals as birdsong and primate vocalization. Section editors Christian F. Beckmann, Carel ten Cate, Simon E. Fisher, Peter Hagoort, Evan Kidd, Stephen C. Levinson, James M. McQueen, Antje S. Meyer, David Poeppel, Caroline F. Rowland, Constance Scharff, Ivan Toni, Willem Zuidema

Doctor Dolittle's Delusion

Author : Stephen R. Anderson
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780300115253
Total Pages : 378 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (152 download)

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Book Synopsis Doctor Dolittle's Delusion by : Stephen R. Anderson

Download or read book Doctor Dolittle's Delusion written by Stephen R. Anderson and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation Dr. Dolittle--and many students of animal communication--are wrong: animals cannot use language. This fascinating book explains why. Can animals be taught a human language and use it to communicate? Or is human language unique to human beings, just as many complex behaviors of other species are uniquely theirs? This engrossing book explores communication and cognition in animals and humans from a linguistic point of view and asserts that animals are not capable of acquiring or using human language. Stephen R. Anderson explains what is meant by communication, the difference between communication and language, and the essential characteristics of language. Next he examines a variety of animal communication systems, including bee dances, frog vocalizations, bird songs, and alarm calls and other vocal, gestural, and olfactory communication among primates. Anderson then compares these to human language, including signed languages used by the deaf. Arguing that attempts to teach human languagesor their equivalents to the great apes have not succeeded in demonstrating linguistic abilities in nonhuman species, he concludes that animal communication systems--intriguing and varied though they may be--do not include all the essential properties of human language. Animals can communicate, but they can't talk. "Written in a playful and highly accessible style, Anderson's book navigates some of the difficult territory of linguistics to provide an illuminating discussion of the evolution of language."--Marc Hauser, author of "Wild Minds: What Animals Really Think.

The Evolution of Language

Author : W. Tecumseh Fitch
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 113948706X
Total Pages : 625 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (394 download)

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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 and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 625 pages. 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.

Reflections on language evolution

Author : Cedric Boeckx
Publisher : Language Science Press
ISBN 13 : 3961103283
Total Pages : 76 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (611 download)

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Book Synopsis Reflections on language evolution by : Cedric Boeckx

Download or read book Reflections on language evolution written by Cedric Boeckx and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This essay reflects on the fact that as we learn more about the biological underpinnings of our language faculty, the dominant evolutionary narrative coming out of the linguistic tradition most explicitly oriented towards biology ("biolinguistics") appears increasingly implausible. This text offers ways of opening up linguistic inquiry and fostering interdisciplinarity, taking advantage of new opportunities to provide quantitative, testable hypotheses concerning the complex evolutionary path that led to the modern human language faculty. The essay is structured around three main themes: (i) renewed appreciation for the comparative method applied to cognitive questions, leading to the identification of elementary but fundamental abstractions in non-linguistic species relevant to language; (ii) awareness of the conceptual gaps between disciplines, and the need to carefully link genotype and phenotype without bypassing any "intermediate" levels of description (certainly not the brain); and (iii) adoption of a "philosophical" outlook that puts the complexity of biological entities front and center.

Communication in Humans and Other Animals

Author : Gisela Håkansson
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9027272018
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (272 download)

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Book Synopsis Communication in Humans and Other Animals by : Gisela Håkansson

Download or read book Communication in Humans and Other Animals written by Gisela Håkansson and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2013-06-27 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Communication is a basic behaviour, found across animal species. Human language is often thought of as a unique system, which separates humans from other animals. This textbook serves as a guide to different types of communication, and suggests that each is unique in its own way: human verbal and nonverbal communication, communication in nonhuman primates, in dogs and in birds. Research questions and findings from different perspectives are summarized and integrated to show students similarities and differences in the rich diversity of communicative behaviours. A core topic is how young individuals proceed from not being able to communicate to reaching a state of competent communicators, and the role of adults in this developmental process. Evolutionary aspects are also taken into consideration, and ideas about the evolution of human language are examined. The cross-disciplinary nature of the book makes it useful for courses in linguistics, biology, sociology and psychology, but it is also valuable reading for anyone interested in understanding communicative behaviour.

Arenas of Language Use

Author : Herbert H. Clark
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226107825
Total Pages : 439 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (261 download)

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Book Synopsis Arenas of Language Use by : Herbert H. Clark

Download or read book Arenas of Language Use written by Herbert H. Clark and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When we think of the ways we use language, we think of face-to-face conversations, telephone conversations, reading and writing, and even talking to oneself. These are arenas of language use—theaters of action in which people do things with language. But what exactly are they doing with language? What are their goals and intentions? By what processes do they achieve these goals? In these twelve essays, Herbert H. Clark and his colleagues discuss the collective nature of language—the ways in which people coordinate with each other to determine the meaning of what they say. According to Clark, in order for one person to understand another, there must be a "common ground" of knowledge between them. He shows how people infer this "common ground" from their past conversations, their immediate surroundings, and their shared cultural background. Clark also discusses the means by which speakers design their utterances for particular audiences and coordinate their use of language with other participants in a language arena. He argues that language use in conversation is a collaborative process, where speaker and listener work together to establish that the listener understands the speaker's meaning. Since people often use words to mean something quite different from the dictionary definitions of those words, Clark offers a realistic perspective on how speakers and listeners coordinate on the meanings of words. This collection presents outstanding examples of Clark's pioneering work on the pragmatics of language use and it will interest psychologists, linguists, computer scientists, and philosophers.

Meanings as Species

Author : Mark Richard
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192580566
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (925 download)

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Book Synopsis Meanings as Species by : Mark Richard

Download or read book Meanings as Species written by Mark Richard and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-18 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mark Richard presents an original picture of meaning according to which a word's meaning is analogous to the biological lineages we call species. His primary thesis is that a word's meaning - in the sense of what one needs to track in order to be a competent speaker - is the collection of assumptions its users make in using it and expect their hearers to recognize as being made. Meaning is something that is spread across a population, inherited by each new generation of speakers from the last, and typically evolving in so far as what constitutes a meaning changes in virtue of the interactions of speakers with their (linguistic and social) environment. Meanings as Species develops and defends the analogy between the biological and the linguistic, and includes a discussion of the senses in which the processes of meaning change are and are not like evolution via natural selection. Richard argues that thinking of meanings as species supports Quine's insights about analyticity without rendering talk about meaning theoretically useless. He also discusses the relations between meaning as what the competent speaker knows about her language, meaning as the determinant of reference and truth conditions, and meaning qua what determines what sentence uses say. This book contains insightful discussions of a wide range of topics in the philosophy of language, including: relations between meaning and philosophical analysis, the project of 'conceptual engineering', the senses in which meaning is and is not compositional, the degree to which to which referential meaning is indeterminate, and what such indeterminacy might tells us about propositional attitudes like belief and assertion.

The Language Instinct

Author : Steven Pinker
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 0062032526
Total Pages : 578 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (62 download)

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Book Synopsis The Language Instinct by : Steven Pinker

Download or read book The Language Instinct written by Steven Pinker and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2010-12-14 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A brilliant, witty, and altogether satisfying book." — New York Times Book Review The classic work on the development of human language by the world’s leading expert on language and the mind In The Language Instinct, the world's expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution. The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America. This edition includes an update on advances in the science of language since The Language Instinct was first published.

Language and Human Behavior

Author : Derek Bickerton
Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 : 0295801042
Total Pages : 191 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (958 download)

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Book Synopsis Language and Human Behavior by : Derek Bickerton

Download or read book Language and Human Behavior written by Derek Bickerton and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2016-06-01 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “What this book proposes to do,” writes Derek Bickerton, “is to stand the conventional wisdom of the behavioral sciences on its head: instead of the human species growing clever enough to invent language, it will view that species as blundering into language and, as a direct result of that, becoming clever.” According to Bickerton, the behavioral sciences have failed to give an adequate account of human nature at least partly because of the conjunction and mutual reinforcement of two widespread beliefs: that language is simply a means of communication and that human intelligence is the result of the rapid growth and unusual size of human brains. Bickerton argues that each of the properties distinguishing human intelligence and consciousness from that of other animals can be shown to derive straightforwardly from properties of language. In essence, language arose as a representational system, not a means of communication or a skill, and not a product of culture but an evolutionary adaptation. The author stresses the necessity of viewing intelligence in evolutionary terms, seeing it not as problem solving but as a way of maintaining homeostasis—the preservation of those conditions most favorable to an organism, the optimal achievable conditions for survival and well-being. Nonhumans practice what he calls “on-line thinking” to maintain homeostasis, but only humans can employ off-line thinking: “only humans can assemble fragments of information to form a pattern that they can later act upon without having to wait on that great but unpunctual teacher, experience.” The term protolanguage is used to describe the stringing together of symbols that prehuman hominids employed. “It did not allow them to turn today’s imagination into tomorrow’s fact. But it is just this power to transform imagination into fact that distinguishes human behavior from that of our ancestral species, and indeed from that of all other species. It is exactly what enables us to change our behavior, or invent vast ranges of new behavior, practically overnight, with no concomitant genetic changes.” Language and Human Behavior should be of interest to anyone in the behavioral and evolutionary sciences and to all those concerned with the role of language in human behavior.

Beyond Words

Author : Carl Safina
Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 0805098887
Total Pages : 480 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (5 download)

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Book Synopsis Beyond Words by : Carl Safina

Download or read book Beyond Words written by Carl Safina and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a world where we usually measure animals by human standards, prize-winning author and MacArthur Fellow Carl Safina takes us inside their lives and minds, witnessing their profound capacity for perception, thought and emotion, showing why the word "it" is often inappropriate as we discover who they really are. Weaving decades of observations of actual families of free-living creatures with new discoveries about brain functioning, Carl Safina's narrative breaches many commonly held boundaries between humans and other animals. InBeyond Words, readers travel the wilds of Africa to visit some of the last great elephant gatherings, then follow wolves of Yellowstone National Park sort out the aftermath of their personal tragedy, then plunge into the astonishingly peaceful society of killer whales living in waters of the Pacific Northwest. We spend quality time, too, with dogs and falcons and ravens; and consider how the human mind originated. In his wise and passionate new book, Safina delivers a graceful examination of how animals truly think and feel, which calls to question what really does—and what should—make us human.