Approaches to Evolution Language: Social and Cognitive Bases - Softcover

Hurford, James R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521639646 ISBN 13: 9780521639644

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2008

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review

"The twenty-two contributors span an impressive diversity of fields...The book has many strengths and is a must-read for serious students of the biology evolution of language." Anthropological Linguistics

Book Description

This book situates language within the framework of modern evolutionary theory. Linguists, anthropologists, and cognitive scientists explore the origins and evolution of human language, emphasizing the social bases on which very complex language structure is founded, and showing how this structure emerges and develops.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521639646
• ISBN 13: 9780521639644
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 456