Approaches to Evolution Language: Social and Cognitive Bases
Cambridge University Press, 8/21/2008
EAN 9780521639644, ISBN10: 0521639646
Paperback, 456 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.6 cm
Language: English
This is one of the first systematic attempts to bring language within the neo-Darwinian framework of modern evolutionary theory, without abandoning the vast gains in phonology and syntax achieved by formal linguistics over the past forty years. The contributors, linguists, psychologists, and paleoanthropologists, address such questions as: what is language as a category of behavior; is it an instrument of thought or of communication; what do individuals know when they know a language; what cognitive, perceptual, and motor capacities must they have to speak, hear, and understand a language? For the past two centuries, scientists have tended to see language function as largely concerned with the exchange of practical information. By contrast, this volume takes as its starting point the view of human intelligence as social, and of language as a device for forming alliances, in exploring the origins of the sound patterns and formal structures that characterize language.
Introduction Michael Studdert-Kennedy, Chris Knight, and James R. Hurford
Part I. Grounding Language Function in Social Cognition
1. Introduction
Grounding language function in social cognition Chris Knight
2. On discontinuing the continuity-discontinuity debate Jean Aitchison
3. The origin of language and cognition Ib Ulbaek
4. Mimesis and the executive suite
missing links in language evolution Merlin Donald
5. Ritual/speech co-evolution
a 'selfish gene' solution to the problem of deception Chris Knight
6. Theory of mind and the evolution of language Robin Dunbar
7. Old wives' tales
the gossip hypothesis and the reliability of cheap signals Camilla Power
8. Altruism, status, and the origin of relevance Jean-Louis Dessalles
9. The evolution of language from social intelligence Robert Worden
Part II. The Emergence of Phonology
10. Introduction
the emergence of phonology Michael Studdert-Kennedy
11. Long call structure in apes as a possible precursor for language Mária Ujhelyi
12. Social sound-making as a precursor to spoken language John F. Locke
13. The particulate origins of language generativity
from syllable to gesture Michael Studdert-Kennedy
14. Evolution of the mechanisms of language output
comparative neurobiology of vocal and manual communication Peter MacNeilage
15. Systemic constraints and adaptive change in the formation of sound structure Björn Lindblom
16. The development of sound systems in human language Klaus J. Kohler
17. Synonymy avoidance, phonology and the origin of syntax Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy
Part III. The Emergence of Syntax
18. Introduction
the emergence of syntax James R. Hurford
19. On the supposed 'counterfunctionality' of universal grammar
some evolutionary implications Frederick J. Newmeyer
20. Language evolution and the minimalist program
the origins of syntax Robert C. Berwick
21. Catastrophic evolution
the case for a single step from protolanguage to full human language Derek Bickerton
22. Fitness and the selective adaptation of language Simon Kirby
23. Synthesizing the origins of language and meaning using co-evolution, self-organization and level formation Luc Steels
24. Computational simulations of the emergence of grammar John Batali.