The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution

About this book

In The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution, sixty leading scholars present critical accounts of every aspect of the field. Its five parts are devoted to insights from comparative animal behaviour; the biology of language evolution; the prehistory of language; the development of a linguistic species; and language creation, transmission, and change. Research on language evolution has burgeoned over the last three decades. Interdisciplinary activity has produced fundamental advances in the understanding of language evolution and in the evolution of human andanimal communication more generally.

The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution presents a wide-ranging summation of work in all the disciplines involved. It highlights the links between different lines of research, shows what has been achieved, and considers promising directions for the future. The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution will be valued by everyone interested in one of the most productive and fascinating fields in natural and cognitive science.

Contents

1: Maggie Tallerman and Kathleen R. Gibson: Introduction: The evolution of language

Part 1: Insights From Comparative Animal Behaviour
2: Kathleen R. Gibson and Maggie Tallerman: Introduction to Part 1: Insights from comparative animal behaviour
3: Kathleen R. Gibson: Language or Protolanguage? A review of the ape language literature
4: Robert M. Seyfarth and Dorothy L. Cheney: Primate Social Cognition as a Precursor to Language
5: Klaus Zuberbühler: Cooperative Breeding and the Evolution of Vocal Flexibility
6: Frans B. M. de Waal and Amy S. Pollick: Gesture as the Most Flexible Modality of Primate Communication
7: Katie Slocombe: Have we Underestimated Great Ape Vocal Capacities?
8: Peter Slater: Bird Song and Language
9: Vincent M. Janik: Vocal Communication and Cognition in Cetaceans
10: Irene M. Pepperberg: Evolution of Communication and Language: Insights from parrots and songbirds
11: Kathleen R. Gibson: Are Other Animals as Smart as Great Apes? Do Others Provide Better Models for the Evolution of Speech or Language?

Part 2: The Biology of Language Evolution: Anatomy, Genetics, and Neurology
12: Kathleen R. Gibson and Maggie Tallerman: Introduction to Part 2: The Biology of Language Evolution: Anatomy, genetics, and neurology
13: W. Tecumseh Fitch: Innateness and Human Language: A biological perspective
14: Szabolcs Számadó and Eörs Szathmáry: Evolutionary Biological Foundations of the Origin of Language: The co-evolution of language and brain
15: Karl C. Diller and Rebecca L. Cann: Genetic Influences on Languaeg Evolution: An evaluation of the evidence
16: Kathleen R. Gibson: Not the Neocortex Alone: Other brain structures also contribute to speech and language
17: Merlin Donald: The Mimetic Origins of Language
18: William D. Hopkins and Jacques Vauclair: Evolution of Behavioural and Brain Asymmetries in Primates
19: Wendy K. Wilkins: Toward an Evolutionary Biology of Language Through Comparative Neuroanatomy
20: Michael A. Arbib: Mirror Systems: Evolving imitation and the bridge from praxis to language
21: Frederick L. Coolidge and Thomas Wynn: Cognitive Prerequisites for the Evolution of Indirect Speech
22: Ann MacLarnon: The Anatomical and Physiological Basis of Human Speech production: Adaptations and exaptations

Part 3: The Pre-history of Language: When and Why Did Language Evolve?
23: Kathleen R. Gibson and Maggie Tallerman: Introduction to Part 3: The pre-history of Language: When and why did language evolve?
24: Rebecca L. Cann: Molecular Perspectives on Human Evolution
25: Bernard A. Wood and Amy L. Bauernfeind: The Fossil Record: Evidence for speech in early hominins
26: Alan Mann: The Genus Homo and the Origins of 'Humanness'
27: Thomas Wynn: The Palaeolithic Record
28: Steven Mithen: Musicality and Language
29: Francesco d'Errico and Marian Vanhaeren: Linguistic Implications of the Earliest Personal Ornaments
30: Rudolf Botha: Inferring Modern Language From Ancient Objects
31: David Lightfoot: Natural Selection-itis
32: Dean Falk: The Role of Honimim Mothers and Infants in Prelinguistic Evolution
33: Bart de Boer: Infant-directed Speech and Language Evolution
34: John L. Locke: Displays of Vocal and Verbal Complexity: A fitness account of language, situated in development
35: Kathleen R. Gibson: Tool-dependent Foraging Strategies and the Origin of Language
36: Robin I. M. Dunbar: Gossip and the Social Origins of Langauge
37: Chris Knight and Camilla Power: Social Conditions for teh Evolutionary Emergence of Language

Part 4: Launching Language: The Development of a Linguistic Species
38: Maggie Tallerman and Kathleen R. Gibson: Introduction to Part 4: Launching Language: The development of a linguistic species
39: Stephen R. Anderson: The Role of Evolution in Shaping the Human Language Faculty
40: James R. Hurford: The Origins of Meaning
41: Michael C. Corballis: The Origins of Language in Manual Gestures
42: Stevan Harnad: From Sensorimotor Categories and Pantomime to Grounded Symbols and Propositions
43: Terrence W. Deacon: The Symbol Concept
44: Robbins Burling: Words Came First: Adaptations for word-learning
45: Michael Studdert-Kennedy: The Emergence of Phonetic Form
46: Peter F. MacNeilage: The Evolution of Phonology
47: Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy: The Evolution of Morphology
48: Maggie Tallerman: What is Syntax?
49: Derek Bickerton: The Origins of Syntactic Language
50: Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy: The Evolutionary Relevance of More and Less Complex Forms of Language
51: Maggie Tallerman: Protolanguage
52: Cedric Boeckx: The Emergence of Language, From a Biolinguistic Point of View

Part 5: Language Change, Creation, and Transmission
53: Maggie Tallerman and Kathleen R. Gibson: Introduction to Part 5: Language Change, Creation, and Transmission
54: Bernd heine and Tania Kuteva: Grammaticalization Theory as a Tool for Reconstructing Language Evolution
55: Joan Bybee: Domain-general Processes as the Basis for Grammar
56: Paul T. Roberge: Pidgins, Creoles, and the Creation of Language
57: Susan Goldin-Meadow: What Modern-day Gesture can tell us About Language Evolution
58: Johanna Nichols: Monogenesis or Polygenesis: A single ancestral language for all humanity?
59: Brigitte Pakendorf: Prehistoric Population Contact and Language Change
60: Kenny Smith: Why Formal Models are Useful for Evolutionary Linguists
61: Simon Kirby: Language is an Adaptive System: The role of cultural evolution in the origins of structure
62: Angelo Cangelosi: Robotics and Embodied Agents Modelling of the Evolution of Language
63: Bart de Boer: Self-organization and Language Evolution
64: Katharing Graf Estes: Statistical Learning and Language Acquisition
65: Nick Chater and Morten H. Christiansen: A Solution of the Logical Problem of Language Evolution: Language as an adaptation to the human brain

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Biography

Maggie Tallerman is Professor of Linguistics at Newcastle University. She has spent her professional life in North East England, having previously taught for 21 years at Durham University. Her research interests centre on the origins and evolution of syntax and morphology; modern Brythonic Celtic syntax and morphology; and language typology. Her publications include Understanding Syntax (Hodder/OUPUSA, 1998; 3rd edn. 2011); with Robert D. Borsley and David Willis, The Syntax of Welsh (CUP, 2007); and, as editor, Language Origins: Perspectives on Evolution (OUP, 2005). She is also the editor of the series Palgrave Modern Linguistics.

Kathleen R. Gibson is Professor Emerita, Neurobiology and Anatomy, University of Texas Houston. Her co-edited books include, with Sue T. Parker, Language' and Intelligence in Monkeys and Apes (CUP 1990); with Tim Ingold, Tools, Language, and Cognition in Human Evolution (CUP 1993); with Paul Mellars, Modelling the Early Human Mind (McDonald Archaeological Institute 1996); and, with Dean Falk, Evolutionary Anatomy of the Human Neocortex (CUP 2001). She is the co-editor with James R. Hurford of the series, Oxford Studies in the Evolution of Language.