Books in the Studies in the Evolution of Language series

This book is the first to focus on the African origins of human language. It explores the origins of language and culture 250,000-150,000 years ago when modern humans evolved in Africa. Internationally renowned scholars address the fossil, genetic, and archaeological evidence and critically examine the ways it has been interpreted.

Linguists, biological anthropologists, and cognitive scientists explore the origins and early evolution of phonology, syntax, and semantics. Evidence is drawn from many domains, including computer simulations of language emergence, the songs of finches, problem-solving abilities in monkeys, sign language, and the structure of languages today.

This book considers the evolution of the grammatical structure of words in the contexts of human evolution and the origins of language. The author challenges the conventional views of the relationship between syntax and morphology, the adaptationist view of language evolution, and the notion that language in some way reflects 'laws of form'.

In this, the first of two ground-breaking volumes on the nature of language in the light of the way it evolved, James Hurford looks at the origins of meaning and of its expression in language and reviews a mass of evidence to uncover the evolutionary path between the non-speaking minds of apes and our own speaking minds. This is a landmark contribution to the understanding of linguistic and thinking processes, and the fullest account yet published of the evolution oflanguage and communication.

This book addresses central questions in the evolution of language: where it came from; how and why it evolved; how it came to be culturally transmitted; and how languages diversified. It does so from the perspective of the latest work in linguistics, neuroscience, psychology, and computer science, and deploys the latest methods and theories to probe into the origins and subsequent development of the only species that has languages.

Traces language back to its earliest origins among our distant ape-like forbears several million years ago. This book examines the qualities of mind and brain needed to support the operations of language; investigates the first links between signs, sounds, and meanings; explores the beginnings and prehistories of vocabulary and grammar; and more.

Deals with the field of language evolution. This title gives accounts of the various scholars' theories on the origins of language, reflecting on important issues and debates.

How humans acquired language and how languages evolved are two of the most intriguing questions in contemporary scientific research. The essays in this volume discuss the subject.

Addresses central questions in the evolution of language: where it came from; how and why it evolved; how it came to be culturally transmitted; and how languages diversified. This book deploys the methods and theories to probe into the origins and subsequent development of the only species that has languages.

Explores the origins and early evolution of phonology, syntax, and semantics. This work considers the nature of pre- and proto-linguistic communication, the internal and external triggers that led to its transformation into language, and whether and how language may be considered to have evolved after its inception.

Combining neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and linguistics, this title explores questions about the origins of speech. It puts forward the proposal that speech can be spontaneously generated by the coupling of evolutionarily simple neural structures connecting perception and production, and tests this hypothesis through a computational system.

This fascinating book challenges the idea that languages are equally complex. Eighteen scholars look at evidence from a wide range of times and places. They consider the links between linguistic structure and change and social complexity. Their conclusions challenge conventional ideas about the nature of language and contemporary theory.

This book is the first to focus on the African origins of human language. It explores the origins of language and culture 250,000-150,000 years ago when modern humans evolved in Africa. Internationally renowned scholars address the fossil, genetic, and archaeological evidence and critically examine the ways it has been interpreted.

This fascinating book challenges the idea that languages are equally complex. Eighteen scholars look at evidence from a wide range of times and places. They consider the links between linguistic structure and change and social complexity. Their conclusions challenge conventional ideas about the nature of language and contemporary theory.

Prominent linguists, cognitive scientists, archaeologists, primatologists, anthropologists, and natural scientists examine issues and advances in understanding language evolution, ranging from the co-evolution of language and music to the evolutionary biology of language. An important and stylish contribution to a fascinating area of research.

This book reconstructs what the earliest grammars might have been and shows how they could have led to the languages of modern humankind. It considers whether these languages derive from a single ancestral language; what the structure of language was when it first evolved; and how the properties associated with modern human languages first arose.

Explores the co-evolutionary paths of biology, culture, and the great human edifice of language, linking the evolution of the language to the general evolutionary history of humankind. This book provides answers to such fundamental paradoxes as to whether we acquired our greatest gift in order to talk or so as to be able to think, and more.

Prominent linguists, cognitive scientists, archaeologists, primatologists, anthropologists, and natural scientists examine issues and advances in understanding language evolution, ranging from the co-evolution of language and music to the evolutionary biology of language. An important and stylish contribution to a fascinating area of research.

Addresses universal tendencies of human vowel systems from the point of view of self-organization. This work uses computer simulations to show that the same universal tendencies found in human languages can be reproduced in a population of artificial agents. It also explores the implications of these results for the evolution of language.