1: Morten H. Christiansen & Simon Kirby: Language Evolution: The
Hardest Problem in Science?
2: Steven Pinker: Language as an Adaptation to the Cognitive
Niche
3: James Hurford: The Language Mosaic and its Evolution
4: Frederick J. Newmeyer: What can the Field of Linguistics Tell Us
About the Origins of Language?
5: Derek Bickerton: Symbol and Structure: A Comprehensive Framework
for Language Evolution
6: Michael Tomasello: On the Different Origins of Symbols and
Grammar
7: Terrence W. Deacon: Universal Grammar and Semiotic
Constraints
8: Iain Davidson: The Archaeological Evidence of Language Origins:
States of the Art
9: Marc D. Hauser & W. Tecumseh Fitch: What are the Uniquely Human
Components of the Language Faculty?
10: Michael A. Arbib: The Evolving Mirror System: A Neural Basis
for Language Readiness
11: Michael C. Corballis: From Hand to Mouth: the Gestural Origins
of Language
12: Robin I. M. Dunbar: The Origin and Subsequent Evolution of
Language
13: Michael Studdert-Kennedy & Louis Goldstein: Launching Language:
the Gestural Origin of Discrete Infinity
14: Philip Lieberman: Motor Control, Speech, and the Evolution of
Human Language
15: Simon Kirby & Morten H. Christiansen: From Language Learning to
Language Evolution
16: Ted Briscoe: Grammatical Assimilation
17: Natalia L. Komarova & Martin A. Nowak: Language, Learning, and
Evolution
Morten H. Christiansen is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Cornell University. He is co-editor of Connectionist Psycholinguistics published by Ablex in 2001. Simon Kirby is a British Academy Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh: his book, Function, Selection, and Innateness was published by OUP in 1999.
Some time since we and the chimpanzees went our separate evolutionary ways, probably towards the very end of that 6 million year period, an innovation occurred whose only precedent was arguably the DNA code itself. Language arose in our ancestors, and there had been nothing like it. Of course other species communicate, many of them vocally, but none of this comes close to the open-ended, generative capacity, the huge vocabulary, the nuanced subtlety, the permanent recordability of language. As an outsider, it is with real fascination that I have read this compendium. One of the merits of any book is its capacity to stimulate the reader to think beyond its confines. This, and other merits are possessed by Language Evolution in abundance. Richard Dawkins This book offers the current states of the art on the subject of language evolution, covering just about every scientific discipline that has a stake in answering the questions it raises. Pragmatics Language Evolution is a brave attempt at a state-of-the-art survey of language origin research at the beginning of the millennium. Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy, Science The evolutionary origins of language should intrigue anyone interested in the relationship of humans to other species. For them, Language Evolution will provide a useful starting point. Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy, Science In the beginning there was no language. Now there is. Language Evolution describes the passage as a wonderful voyage of discovery. Nurturing Potential
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