Origins of Language

Origins of Language
Author: Sverker Johansson
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2005-02-17
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027294607


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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.


Origins of Language
Language: en
Pages: 359
Authors: Sverker Johansson
Categories: Language Arts & Disciplines
Type: BOOK - Published: 2005-02-17 - Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

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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 s
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Language: en
Pages: 0
Authors: Merritt Ruhlen
Categories: Foreign Language Study
Type: BOOK - Published: 2023 - Publisher: Gorgias Press

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This book, The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue, originally published in 1994 by John Wiley & Sons, was written in a more popular
History of Language
Language: en
Pages: 244
Authors: Steven Roger Fischer
Categories: Language Arts & Disciplines
Type: BOOK - Published: 2004-10-03 - Publisher: Reaktion Books

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It is tempting to take the tremendous rate of contemporary linguistic change for granted. What is required, in fact, is a radical reinterpretation of what langu
Origins of Language
Language: en
Pages: 182
Authors: James R. Hurford
Categories: Language Arts & Disciplines
Type: BOOK - Published: 2014-03 - Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

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This book offers an accessible overview of what is known about the evolution of the human capacity for language and what sets human language apart from the simp
Roots of language
Language: en
Pages: 305
Authors: Derek Bickerton
Categories: Language Arts & Disciplines
Type: BOOK - Published: 2016-02-05 - Publisher: Language Science Press

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Roots of language was originally published in 1981 by Karoma Press (Ann Arbor). It was the first work to systematically develop a theory first suggested by Coel