Language 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.

• 1. Language Evolution: The Hardest Problem in Science? ; 2. Language as an Adaptation to the Cognitive Niche ; 3. The Language Mosaic and its Evolution ; 4. What can the Field of Linguistics Tell Us About the Origins of Language? ; 5. Symbol and Structure: A Comprehensive Framework for Language Evolution ; 6. On the Different Origins of Symbols and Grammar ; 7. Universal Grammar and Semiotic Constraints ; 8. The Archaeological Evidence of Language Origins: States of the Art ; 9. What are the Uniquely Human Components of the Language Faculty? ; 10. The Evolving Mirror System: A Neural Basis for Language Readiness ; 11. From Hand to Mouth: the Gestural Origins of Language ; 12. The Origin and Subsequent Evolution of Language ; 13. Launching Language: the Gestural Origin of Discrete Infinity ; 14. Motor Control, Speech, and the Evolution of Human Language ; 15. From Language Learning to Language Evolution ; 16. Grammatical Assimilation ; 17. Language, Learning, and Evolution