The evolution of language / W. Tecumseh Fitch.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fitch, W. Tecumseh, author.

Series:

Approaches to the evolution of language.

Approaches to the evolution of language

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Language and languages--Origin.

Language and languages.

Historical linguistics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 610 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Language, more than anything else, is what makes us human. It appears that no communication system of equivalent power exists elsewhere in the animal kingdom. Any normal human child will learn a language based on rather sparse data in the surrounding world, while even the brightest chimpanzee, exposed to the same environment, will not. Why not? How, and why, did language evolve in our species and not in others? Since Darwin's theory of evolution, questions about the origin of language have generated a rapidly-growing scientific literature, stretched across a number of disciplines, much of it directed at specialist audiences. The diversity of perspectives - from linguistics, anthropology, speech science, genetics, neuroscience and evolutionary biology - can be bewildering. Tecumseh Fitch cuts through this vast literature, bringing together its most important insights to explore one of the biggest unsolved puzzles of human history.

Contents:

The lay of the land. Language from a biological perspective ; Evolution : consensus and controversy ; Language ; Animal cognition and communication

Meet the ancestors. Meet the ancestors ; The LCA : our last common ancestor with chimpanzees ; Hominid paleontology and archaeology

The evolution of speech. The evolution of the human vocal tract ; The evolution of vocal control : the neural basis for spoken language ; Models of the evolution of speech and phonology

Evaluating phylogenetic models of language evolution. Historical overview : Western theories of language origin before Darwin ; Lexical protolanguage ; Signs before speech : gestural protolanguage theories ; Musical protolanguage.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references (p. [521]-604) and index.

ISBN:

1-107-21005-4

0-511-84993-1

0-511-81777-0

0-511-68195-X

0-511-67747-2

0-511-68393-6

0-511-67997-1

OCLC:

648736188