The nature and origin of language / Denis Bouchard.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bouchard, Denis.

Series:

Studies in the evolution of language

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Language and languages--Origin.

Language and languages.

Physical Description:

xiii, 385 pages ; 24 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2013.

Summary:

This book looks at how the human brain got the capacity for language and how language then evolved. The author argues that language is a system of signs, considers how these elements first came together in the brain, and examines the brain mechanisms that allowed their formation. He shows that his explanation of language origins and evolution is consistent with the complex properties of languages and that it offers insights to both language learnability and constructions that have defied decades of linguistic analysis. Denis Bouchard's outstandingly original account will interest linguists of all persuasions as well as cognitive scientists and others interested in the evolution of language. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I The emergence of language

1 Scenarios for the emergence of language 3

1.1 Why study the origin of language? 3

1.2 Basic questions about the origin of language 7

1.3 Language as a culturally evolved system of symbolic communication 8

1.4 Language as a genetically evolved system 15

1.4.1 Jackendoff and Pinker: language as an adaptation by natural selection 15

1.4.2 Bickerton: language as an adaptation in two steps 18

1.4.3 Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch: saltation for syntax (Merge) 30

1.4.4 Chomsky: the language of thought and late externalization 41

1.4.5 Hurford: constructions and UG-plus 55

1.5 The continuity problem 58

Part II What is language that it could have evolved?

2 Language: facts and theory 63

2.1 External motivation in linguistics 65

2.2 Saussure, biolinguistics, and principled explanation 68

2.3 Saussure and syntax 77

3 The Sign Theory of Language 83

Part III The origin of language: from neurons to signs

4 The neurogenetic factors: Offline Brain Systems 101

4.1 Arbib and Rizzolatti: the Mirror System Hypothesis 101

4.2 Uniquely human traits 107

4.3 The Human-specific Adaptive Suite 111

4.3.1 How Offline Brain Systems emerged 115

4.3.2 Offline Brain Systems and Theory of Mind 120

4.3.3 Offline Brain Systems and episodic memory 124

4.3.4 Offline Brain Systems and concepts 125

4.3.5 Offline Brain Systems and object permanence 127

4.4 Offline Brain Systems: a testable hypothesis 128

5 The emergence of linguistic signs 133

5.1 The transition from animal call systems to human language 134

5.2 From Offline Brain Systems to language 143

5.3 Independence from modality 146

5.4 Answers to the basic questions 147

6 Self-organizing constraints due to building materials 153

6.1 Contrastive dispersion of percepts and combinatorial phonology 154

6.1.1 Phonological segments 154

6.1.2 Phonological combinations 158

6.2 Contrastive dispersion of meanings and combinatorial semantics 161

6.3 Linking meanings and forms: the Saussurean sign 167

6.4 Syntax: the contrastive dispersion of combinatorial signs 169

6.4.1 How language became combinatorial 173

6.4.2 Type-recursion 174

6.5 Morphology 179

6.6 Fine-tuning 183

6.6.1 Speech production 184

6.6.2 Speech perception 185

6.6.3 Conceptual structure 186

6.7 Conclusion: matters of substance 187

6.8 Potential fossils 192

7 The protolanguage hypothesis 196

7.1 Why hypothesize a protolanguage? 196

7.2 Burst in creativity and syntacticized language 201

7.2.1 Symbolic artifacts 202

7.2.2 Tool technology 206

7.3 Summary on protolanguage 211

Part IV Explaining the properties of language

8 Combinatorial signs and Universal Grammar 215

8.1 Semantics in syntactic computations 219

8.2 Phonology in syntactic computations 223

8.3 Universal Grammar: a quite unfinished business 228

9 How signs account for some complex properties of language 235

9.1 Structure dependence: UG meets semantics 236

9.2 c-command and referential relations: syntax in the semantics 260

9.2.1 Condition C of the Binding Theory 261

9.2.2 Binding reflexives: coercing Ringo 267

9.3 Defective signs: forms without meaning 274

9.3.1 Is there a semantically empty element? 279

9.3.2 Splitting signs by raising subjects 292

9.4 Spreading signs along the Wh-chain 298

9.4.1 Why syntax has extended dependencies 303

9.4.2 Bounding the Long Distance Dependencies 306

9.4.3 Bounding Theory and the Minimalist Framework 313

9.5 Learnability in the Sign Theory of Language 318

10 In the beginning was the sign 333.

ISBN:

9780199681624

0199681627

9780199681631

0199681635

OCLC:

834435380