Language Evolution - Brossura

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0199244847 ISBN 13: 9780199244843

Casa editrice: OUP Oxford, 2003

Riassunto

The leading scholars in the rapidly growing field of language evolution give readable accounts of their theories on the origins of language and reflect on the most important current issues and debates. As well as providing a guide to their own published research in this area they highlight what they see as the most relevant research of others. The authors come from a wide range of disciplines involved in language evolution including linguistics, cognitive science, computational science, primatology, and archaeology.

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Recensione:

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)

L'autore:

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.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: OUP Oxford
• Data di pubblicazione: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0199244847
• ISBN 13: 9780199244843
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 414
• Redattore: Christiansen Morten H., Kirby Simon