Approaches to the Evolution of Language: Social and Cognitive Bases

James Raymond Hurford, James R. Hurford, Michael Studdert-Kennedy, Chris Knight

Cambridge University Press, Sep 17, 1998 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 442 pages

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.

Contents

• Grounding language function in social cognition: 9
• On discontinuing the continuitydiscontinuity debate: 17
• The origin of language and cognition: 30
• Mimesis and the Executive Suite missing links in language evolution: 44
• Ritualspeech coevolution a solution to the problem of deception: 68
• Theory of mind and the evolution of language: 92
• Old wives tales the gossip hypothesis and the reliability of cheap signals: 111
• Altruism status and the origin of relevance: 130
• The evolution of language from social intelligence: 148
• The emergence of phonology: 169
• Longcall structure in apes as a possible precursor for language: 177
• Social soundmaking as a precursor to spoken language: 190
• The particulate origins of language generativity from syllable to gesture: 202
• Evolution of the mechanism of language output comparative neurobiology of vocal and manual communication: 222
• Systemic constraints and adaptive change in the formation of sound structure: 242
• The development of sound systems in human language: 265
• Synonymy avoidance phonology and the origin of syntax: 279
• The emergence of syntax: 299
• On the supposed counterfunctionality of Universal Grammar some evolutionary implications: 305
• Language evolution and the Minimalist Program the origins of syntax: 320
• Catastrophic evolution the case for a single step from protolanguage to full human language: 341
• Fitness and the selective adaptation of language: 359
• Synthesizing the origins of language and meaning using coevolution selforganization and level formation: 384
• Computational simulations of the emergence of grammar: 405
• Index: 427

Bibliographic information

• Title: Approaches to the Evolution of Language: Social and Cognitive Bases
• Editors: James Raymond Hurford, James R. Hurford, Michael Studdert-Kennedy, Chris Knight
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1998
• ISBN: 0521639646, 9780521639644
• Length: 442 pages
• Subjects: Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / General; Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / Historical & Comparative; Social Science / Anthropology / General