Bio-linguistics : the Santa Barbara lectures / T. Givon.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Givón, Talmy, 1936-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Biolinguistics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (401 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam ; Philadelphia : J. Benjamins Pub. Co., c2002.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Is human language an evolutionary adaptation? Is linguistics a natural science? These questions have bedeviled philosophers, philologists and linguists from Plato through Chomsky. Prof. Givón suggests that the answers fall naturally within an integrated study of living organisms.In this new work, Givón points out that language operates between aspects of both complex biological design and adaptive behavior. As in biology, the whole is an adaptive compromise to competing demands. Variation is the indispensable tool of learning, change and adaptation. The contrast between innateness and input-driven emergence is an interaction between genetically-coded and behaviorally-coded experience.In enlarging the cross-disciplinary domain, the book examines the parallels between language evolution and language diachrony. Sociality, cooperation and communication are shown to be rooted in a common evolutionary source, the kin-based hunting-and-gathering society of intimates.The book pays homage to the late Joseph Greenberg and his visionary integration of functional motivation, typological diversity and diachronic change.

Contents:

Bio-Linguistics

Title page

LCC page

IN MEMORIAM JOSEPH GREENBERG

Table of contents

Preface

Chapter 1 Language as a biological adaptation

Notes

Chapter 2 The bounds of generativity and the adaptive basis of variation

Chapter 3 The demise of competence

Chapter 4 Human language as an evolutionary product

Chapter 5 An evolutionary account of language processing rates

Appendix

Chapter 6 The diachronic foundations of language universals

Chapter 7 The neuro-cognitive interpretation of 'context': Anticipating other minds

Chapter 8 The grammar of the narrator's perspective in fiction

Chapter 9 The society of intimates

Chapter 10 On the ontology of academic negativity

Epilogue: Joseph Greenberg as a theorist

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [355]-375) and index.

ISBN:

9786612160844

9781282160842

1282160842

9789027296061

9027296065

OCLC:

55664360