How Language Began
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How Language Began
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Author : Daniel Everett
language : en
Publisher: Profile Books
Release Date : 2017-09-21
How Language Began written by Daniel Everett and has been published by Profile Books this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2017-09-21 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
In his groundbreaking new book Daniel Everett seeks answers to questions that have perplexed thinkers from Plato to Chomsky: when and how did language begin? what is it? and what is it for? Daniel Everett confounds the conventional wisdom that language originated with Homo sapiens 150,000 years ago and that we have a 'language instinct'. Drawing on evidence from a wide range of fields, including linguistics, archaeology, biology, anthropology and neuroscience, he shows that our ancient ancestors, Homo erectus, had the biological and mental equipment for speech one and half million years ago, and that their cultural and technological achievements (including building ocean-going boats) make it overwhelmingly likely they spoke some kind of language. How Language Began sheds new light on language and culture and what it means to be human and, as always, Daniel Everett spices his account with incident and anecdote. His book is convincing, arresting and entertaining.
How Language Began
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Author : David McNeill
language : en
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Release Date : 2012-08-30
How Language Began written by David McNeill and has been published by Cambridge University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2012-08-30 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
Human language is not the same as human speech. We use gestures and signs to communicate alongside, or instead of, speaking. Yet gestures and speech are processed in the same areas of the human brain, and the study of how both have evolved is central to research on the origins of human communication. Written by one of the pioneers of the field, this is the first book to explain how speech and gesture evolved together into a system that all humans possess. Nearly all theorizing about the origins of language either ignores gesture, views it as an add-on or supposes that language began in gesture and was later replaced by speech. David McNeill challenges the popular 'gesture-first' theory that language first emerged in a gesture-only form and proposes a groundbreaking theory of the evolution of language which explains how speech and gesture became unified.
Grooming Gossip And The Evolution Of Language
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Author : Robin Dunbar
language : en
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Release Date : 2011-04-07
Grooming Gossip And The Evolution Of Language written by Robin Dunbar and has been published by Faber & Faber this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2011-04-07 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
Did mankind evolve unusually large brains simply in order to gossip? Primates differ from other animals by the intensity of their social relationships, by the amount of time they spend grooming one another. Not just a matter of hygiene, grooming is all about cementing bonds, making friends and influencing your fellow ape. Early humans, in their characteristic large groups of 150 or so, would have had to spend almost half their time in mutual grooming. Instead, Professor Robin Dunbar argues, they evolved a more efficient mechanism: language. It seems there is nothing idle about idle chatter. Having a good gossip ensures that a dynamic group - of hunter-gatherers, soldiers, workmates - remains cohesive.Men and women 'gossip' equally, but men tend to talk about themselves, while women talk more about other people, working to strengthen the female-female relationships that underpin both human and primate societies. Until now, most anthropologists have assumed that language developed in male-male relationships, during activities such as hunting. Dunbar's intriguing research suggests that, to the contrary, language evolved among women.
Language
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Author : Daniel L. Everett
language : en
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date : 2012-03-13
Language written by Daniel L. Everett and has been published by Vintage this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2012-03-13 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
A bold and provocative study that presents language not as an innate component of the brain—as most linguists do—but as an essential tool unique to each culture worldwide. For years, the prevailing opinion among academics has been that language is embedded in our genes, existing as an innate and instinctual part of us. But linguist Daniel Everett argues that, like other tools, language was invented by humans and can be reinvented or lost. He shows how the evolution of different language forms—that is, different grammar—reflects how language is influenced by human societies and experiences, and how it expresses their great variety. For example, the Amazonian Pirahã put words together in ways that violate our long-held under-standing of how language works, and Pirahã grammar expresses complex ideas very differently than English grammar does. Drawing on the Wari’ language of Brazil, Everett explains that speakers of all languages, in constructing their stories, omit things that all members of the culture understand. In addition, Everett discusses how some cultures can get by without words for numbers or counting, without verbs for “to say” or “to give,” illustrating how the very nature of what’s important in a language is culturally determined. Combining anthropology, primatology, computer science, philosophy, linguistics, psychology, and his own pioneering—and adventurous—research with the Amazonian Pirahã, and using insights from many different languages and cultures, Everett gives us an unprecedented elucidation of this society-defined nature of language. In doing so, he also gives us a new understanding of how we think and who we are.
Dark Matter Of The Mind
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Author : Daniel L. Everett
language : en
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Release Date : 2017-11-06
Dark Matter Of The Mind written by Daniel L. Everett and has been published by University of Chicago Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2017-11-06 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
Is it in our nature to be altruistic, or evil, to make art, use tools, or create language? Is it in our nature to think in any particular way? For Daniel L. Everett, the answer is a resounding no: it isn’t in our nature to do any of these things because human nature does not exist—at least not as we usually think of it. Flying in the face of major trends in Evolutionary Psychology and related fields, he offers a provocative and compelling argument in this book that the only thing humans are hardwired for is freedom: freedom from evolutionary instinct and freedom to adapt to a variety of environmental and cultural contexts. Everett sketches a blank-slate picture of human cognition that focuses not on what is in the mind but, rather, what the mind is in—namely, culture. He draws on years of field research among the Amazonian people of the Pirahã in order to carefully scrutinize various theories of cognitive instinct, including Noam Chomsky’s foundational concept of universal grammar, Freud’s notions of unconscious forces, Adolf Bastian’s psychic unity of mankind, and works on massive modularity by evolutionary psychologists such as Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, Jerry Fodor, and Steven Pinker. Illuminating unique characteristics of the Pirahã language, he demonstrates just how differently various cultures can make us think and how vital culture is to our cognitive flexibility. Outlining the ways culture and individual psychology operate symbiotically, he posits a Buddhist-like conception of the cultural self as a set of experiences united by various apperceptions, episodic memories, ranked values, knowledge structures, and social roles—and not, in any shape or form, biological instinct. The result is fascinating portrait of the “dark matter of the mind,” one that shows that our greatest evolutionary adaptation is adaptability itself.
Don T Sleep There Are Snakes
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Author : Daniel Everett
language : en
Publisher: Profile Books
Release Date : 2010-07-09
Don T Sleep There Are Snakes written by Daniel Everett and has been published by Profile Books this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2010-07-09 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
Although Daniel Everett was a missionary, far from converting the Pirahãs, they converted him. He shows the slow, meticulous steps by which he gradually mastered their language and his gradual realisation that its unusual nature closely reflected its speakers' startlingly original perceptions of the world. Everett describes how he began to realise that his discoveries about the Pirahã language opened up a new way of understanding how language works in our minds and in our lives, and that this way was utterly at odds with Noam Chomsky's universally accepted linguistic theories. The perils of passionate academic opposition were then swiftly conjoined to those of the Amazon in a debate whose outcome has yet to be won. Everett's views are most recently discussed in Tom Wolfe's bestselling The Kingdom of Speech. Adventure, personal enlightenment and the makings of a scientific revolution proceed together in this vivid, funny and moving book.
The Language Instinct
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Author : Steven Pinker
language : en
Publisher: Penguin UK
Release Date : 2003-02-27
The Language Instinct written by Steven Pinker and has been published by Penguin UK this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2003-02-27 with Philosophy categories.
'Dazzling...Pinker's big idea is that language is an instinct...as innate to us as flying is to geese...Words can hardly do justice to the superlative range and liveliness of Pinker's investigations' - Independent 'A marvellously readable book...illuminates every facet of human language: its biological origin, its uniqueness to humanity, it acquisition by children, its grammatical structure, the production and perception of speech, the pathology of language disorders and the unstoppable evolution of languages and dialects' - Nature
An Introduction To The Study Of Language
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Author : Leonard Bloomfield
language : en
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Release Date : 1983-01-01
An Introduction To The Study Of Language written by Leonard Bloomfield and has been published by John Benjamins Publishing this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 1983-01-01 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
This is a fac simile edition of Bloomfield's An Introduction to the Study of Language (New York 1914), with an introductory article by Joseph S. Kess. Leonard Bloomfield (1887-1949) was responsible for two classic textbooks in the field of linguistics. The earlier, reproduced here, shows some striking differences to his later views, reflecting much of the then-current thinking on language matters. As such, it represents not only an interesting commentary on the theoretical development of an extremely influential linguist, but more importantly, it is a telling document in the evolving history of the discipline and a rich source for the (psycho)linguist interested in how and why we got from where we were to where we are.
Consequences Of Language
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Author : N. J. Enfield
language : en
Publisher: MIT Press
Release Date : 2022-11-22
Consequences Of Language written by N. J. Enfield and has been published by MIT Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2022-11-22 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
What is it about humans that makes language possible, and what is it about language that makes us human? If you are reading this, you have done something that only our species has evolved to do. You have acquired a natural language. This book asks, How has this changed us? Where scholars have long wondered what it is about humans that makes language possible, N. J. Enfield and Jack Sidnell ask instead, What is it about humans that is made possible by language? In Consequences of Language their objective is to understand what modern language really is and to identify its logical and conceptual consequences for social life. Central to this undertaking is the concept of intersubjectivity, the open sharing of subjective experience. There is, Enfield and Sidnell contend, a uniquely human form of intersubjectivity, and it is essentially intertwined with language in two ways: a primary form of intersubjectivity was necessary for language to have begun evolving in our species in the first place and then language, through its defining reflexive properties, transformed the nature of our intersubjectivity. In the authors’ analysis, social accountability—the bedrock of society—is grounded in this linguistically transformed, enhanced kind of intersubjectivity. The account of the language-mind-society connection put forward in Consequences of Language is one of unprecedented reach, suggesting new connections across disciplines centrally concerned with language—from anthropology and philosophy to sociology and cognitive science—and among those who would understand the foundational role of language in making us human.
Language In Our Brain
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Author : Angela D. Friederici
language : en
Publisher: MIT Press
Release Date : 2017-11-16
Language In Our Brain written by Angela D. Friederici and has been published by MIT Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2017-11-16 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
A comprehensive account of the neurobiological basis of language, arguing that species-specific brain differences may be at the root of the human capacity for language. Language makes us human. It is an intrinsic part of us, although we seldom think about it. Language is also an extremely complex entity with subcomponents responsible for its phonological, syntactic, and semantic aspects. In this landmark work, Angela Friederici offers a comprehensive account of these subcomponents and how they are integrated. Tracing the neurobiological basis of language across brain regions in humans and other primate species, she argues that species-specific brain differences may be at the root of the human capacity for language. Friederici shows which brain regions support the different language processes and, more important, how these brain regions are connected structurally and functionally to make language processes that take place in milliseconds possible. She finds that one particular brain structure (a white matter dorsal tract), connecting syntax-relevant brain regions, is present only in the mature human brain and only weakly present in other primate brains. Is this the “missing link” that explains humans' capacity for language? Friederici describes the basic language functions and their brain basis; the language networks connecting different language-related brain regions; the brain basis of language acquisition during early childhood and when learning a second language, proposing a neurocognitive model of the ontogeny of language; and the evolution of language and underlying neural constraints. She finds that it is the information exchange between the relevant brain regions, supported by the white matter tract, that is the crucial factor in both language development and evolution.