How Language Began
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How Language Began The Story Of Humanity S Greatest Invention
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Author : Daniel L. Everett
language : en
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
Release Date : 2017-11-07
How Language Began The Story Of Humanity S Greatest Invention written by Daniel L. Everett and has been published by Liveright Publishing this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2017-11-07 with Science categories.
How Language Began revolutionizes our understanding of the one tool that has allowed us to become the "lords of the planet." Mankind has a distinct advantage over other terrestrial species: we talk to one another. But how did we acquire the most advanced form of communication on Earth? Daniel L. Everett, a “bombshell” linguist and “instant folk hero” (Tom Wolfe, Harper’s), provides in this sweeping history a comprehensive examination of the evolutionary story of language, from the earliest speaking attempts by hominids to the more than seven thousand languages that exist today. Although fossil hunters and linguists have brought us closer to unearthing the true origins of language, Daniel Everett’s discoveries have upended the contemporary linguistic world, reverberating far beyond academic circles. While conducting field research in the Amazonian rainforest, Everett came across an age-old language nestled amongst a tribe of hunter-gatherers. Challenging long-standing principles in the field, Everett now builds on the theory that language was not intrinsic to our species. In order to truly understand its origins, a more interdisciplinary approach is needed—one that accounts as much for our propensity for culture as it does our biological makeup. Language began, Everett theorizes, with Homo Erectus, who catalyzed words through culturally invented symbols. Early humans, as their brains grew larger, incorporated gestures and voice intonations to communicate, all of which built on each other for 60,000 generations. Tracing crucial shifts and developments across the ages, Everett breaks down every component of speech, from harnessing control of more than a hundred respiratory muscles in the larynx and diaphragm, to mastering the use of the tongue. Moving on from biology to execution, Everett explores why elements such as grammar and storytelling are not nearly as critical to language as one might suspect. In the book’s final section, Cultural Evolution of Language, Everett takes the ever-debated “language gap” to task, delving into the chasm that separates “us” from “the animals.” He approaches the subject from various disciplines, including anthropology, neuroscience, and archaeology, to reveal that it was social complexity, as well as cultural, physiological, and neurological superiority, that allowed humans—with our clawless hands, breakable bones, and soft skin—to become the apex predator. How Language Began ultimately explains what we know, what we’d like to know, and what we likely never will know about how humans went from mere communication to language. Based on nearly forty years of fieldwork, Everett debunks long-held theories by some of history’s greatest thinkers, from Plato to Chomsky. The result is an invaluable study of what makes us human.
Language
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Author : Daniel Everett
language : en
Publisher: Profile Books
Release Date : 2012-03-22
Language 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 2012-03-22 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
Like other tools, language was invented, can be reinvented or lost, and shows significant variation across cultures. It's as essential to survival as fire - and, like fire, is found in all human societies. Language presents the bold and controversial idea that language is not an innate component of the brain, as has been famously argued by Chomsky and Pinker. Rather, it's a cultural tool which varies much more across different societies than the innateness view suggests. Fusing adventure, anthropology, linguistics and psychology, and drawing on Everett's pioneering research with the Amazonian Pirahs, Language argues that language is embedded within - and is inseparable from - its specific culture. This book is like a fire that will generate much light. And much heat.
How Language Began
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Author : Daniel L. Everett
language : en
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Release Date : 2017-11-07
How Language Began written by Daniel L. Everett and has been published by National Geographic Books this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2017-11-07 with Science categories.
How Language Began revolutionizes our understanding of the one tool that has allowed us to become the "lords of the planet." Mankind has a distinct advantage over other terrestrial species: we talk to one another. But how did we acquire the most advanced form of communication on Earth? Daniel L. Everett, a “bombshell” linguist and “instant folk hero” (Tom Wolfe, Harper’s), provides in this sweeping history a comprehensive examination of the evolutionary story of language, from the earliest speaking attempts by hominids to the more than seven thousand languages that exist today. Although fossil hunters and linguists have brought us closer to unearthing the true origins of language, Daniel Everett’s discoveries have upended the contemporary linguistic world, reverberating far beyond academic circles. While conducting field research in the Amazonian rainforest, Everett came across an age-old language nestled amongst a tribe of hunter-gatherers. Challenging long-standing principles in the field, Everett now builds on the theory that language was not intrinsic to our species. In order to truly understand its origins, a more interdisciplinary approach is needed—one that accounts as much for our propensity for culture as it does our biological makeup. Language began, Everett theorizes, with Homo Erectus, who catalyzed words through culturally invented symbols. Early humans, as their brains grew larger, incorporated gestures and voice intonations to communicate, all of which built on each other for 60,000 generations. Tracing crucial shifts and developments across the ages, Everett breaks down every component of speech, from harnessing control of more than a hundred respiratory muscles in the larynx and diaphragm, to mastering the use of the tongue. Moving on from biology to execution, Everett explores why elements such as grammar and storytelling are not nearly as critical to language as one might suspect. In the book’s final section, Cultural Evolution of Language, Everett takes the ever-debated “language gap” to task, delving into the chasm that separates “us” from “the animals.” He approaches the subject from various disciplines, including anthropology, neuroscience, and archaeology, to reveal that it was social complexity, as well as cultural, physiological, and neurological superiority, that allowed humans—with our clawless hands, breakable bones, and soft skin—to become the apex predator. How Language Began ultimately explains what we know, what we’d like to know, and what we likely never will know about how humans went from mere communication to language. Based on nearly forty years of fieldwork, Everett debunks long-held theories by some of history’s greatest thinkers, from Plato to Chomsky. The result is an invaluable study of what makes us human.
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.
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.
How Language Began
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Author : David McNeill
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 2012
How Language Began written by David McNeill and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2012 with Linguistic change categories.
The first book to explain how speech and gesture evolved together into a system that all humans possess.
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 Pirahs, 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 Pirah 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.
How Language Began
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Author : David McNeill
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 2012
How Language Began written by David McNeill and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2012 with Linguistic change categories.
The first book to explain how speech and gesture evolved together into a system that all humans possess.
Language Vs Reality
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Author : N.J. Enfield
language : en
Publisher: MIT Press
Release Date : 2022-03-29
Language Vs Reality 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 2022-03-29 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
A fascinating examination of how we are both played by language and made by language: the science underlying the bugs and features of humankind’s greatest invention. Language is said to be humankind’s greatest accomplishment. But what is language actually good for? It performs poorly at representing reality. It is a constant source of distraction, misdirection, and overshadowing. In fact, N. J. Enfield notes, language is far better at persuasion than it is at objectively capturing the facts of experience. Language cannot create or change physical reality, but it can do the next best thing: reframe and invert our view of the world. In Language vs. Reality, Enfield explains why language is bad for scientists (who are bound by reality) but good for lawyers (who want to win their cases), why it can be dangerous when it falls into the wrong hands, and why it deserves our deepest respect. Enfield offers a lively exploration of the science underlying the bugs and features of language. He examines the tenuous relationship between language and reality; details the array of effects language has on our memory, attention, and reasoning; and describes how these varied effects power narratives and storytelling as well as political spin and conspiracy theories. Why should we care what language is good for? Enfield, who has spent twenty years at the cutting edge of language research, argues that understanding how language works is crucial to tackling our most pressing challenges, including human cognitive bias, media spin, the “post-truth” problem, persuasion, the role of words in our thinking, and much more.
When Time Began
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Author : Zecharia Sitchin
language : en
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Release Date : 1994-03-01
When Time Began written by Zecharia Sitchin and has been published by Simon and Schuster this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 1994-03-01 with Body, Mind & Spirit categories.
Night and day, month after month, year after year, our ancestors dutifully recorded the passage of time on clay tablets, watching the heavens from stage towers and pyramids and from megalithic monuments whose incredible size and precise architecture boggle the mind. . . . Who were the builders of these mysterious structures? What was their purpose? Whose signature is indelibly written on these timeless stones, and who was the Divine Architect? Why was Stonehenge and its likes built by ancient civilizations at the very same time--4,100 years ago? What is their message for our time? With these questions in mind, Zecharia Sitchin, renowned researcher of past ages, takes us on a journey through the records of time in this, the fifth book of his Earth Chronicles series. Drawing deeply on Sumerian and Egyptian writings, millenia-old artifacts, and sacred architecture ranging from ancient Mesopotamia to pre-Columbian civilizations in the Americas, this bestselling scholar provides astounding insights into the origins of the calendar, astronomy, and astrology. He takes readers to the climax circa 2100 b.c. when Marduk, the Babylonian national god, attained supremacy on Earth and proclaimed the New Age of Aries--after which society, religion, science, and the status of women were never the same.