The Evolution of Language: Towards Gestural Hypotheses

Description

This book discusses the scope and development of the science of language evolution – a newly emergent field that investigates the origin of language. The book is addressed to audiences who are not professionally involved in science and presents the problems of language origins together with introductory information on such topics as the theory of evolution, elements of linguistic theory, the neural infrastructure of language or the signalling theory. Cover Copyright information Contents Introduction to the Translation Introduction Structure of the book Chapter 1 The Beginnings of Language and Language Origins 1.1 Religious beginnings 1.1.1 On the divinity of language, the forbidden experiment, and the Adamic language 1.1.2 Language as the object of investigation Jewish tradition 1.1.3 Reflections on language in Indian philosophy 1.1.4 Summary 1.2 Glottogenetic thought: A naturalistic concept of language emergence 1.2.1 How to recover from the state of nature? Vico The beginnings of comparative research Monboddo Mandeville Condillac Rousseau Herder Parisian ideologists Comparative philology 1.2.2 Darwin: The beginnings of the science on the evolutionary origin of language Early Darwinism and the glottogenetic problem Empirical advances Anthropology and psychology on the beginnings of language 1.3 Conclusion Chapter 2 Evolution, Evolutionism, Evolutionary Thinking 2.1 Evolution and natural selection 2.1.1 Adaptation 2.1.2 Gene’s eye view and inclusive fitness 2.2 Universal Darwinism and cultural evolution 2.3 Evolutionary psychology 2.4 Popular reception and the sins of evolutionism 2.5 Evolution: Myths and misconceptions 2.5.1 Simplification: Evolution = natural selection 2.5.2 Misconception: Panadaptationism (naïve selectionism) 2.5.3 Misconception: Survival of the fittest 2.5.4 Misconception: Preservation of the species/The good of the species 2.5.5 Misconception: Lamarckism 2.5.6 Misconception: Macromutation and saltationism 2.5.7 Misconception: Evolution has a purpose (teleology) 2.5.8 Misconception: Evolution means progress or going up in the great chain of beings 2.5.9 Misconception: Recapitulationism (“ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”) 2.5.10 Misconception: Confusing explanatory levels 2.6 Summary Chapter 3 The Evolution of Language: 3.1  Road to the science of language evolution 3.1.1 Renewed interest 3.1.2 Chomsky, internalism and the biological foundations of language 3.1.3 Advances in the neurosciences Research on primates Genetics Palaeontology and archaeology Neuroscience 3.1.4 Evolutionism 3.2 Contemporary evolution of language 3.2.1 The evolution of language: A new research programme 3.2.2 New research trends in the evolution of language 3.3 Evolution – of what? The taxonomy of “language” 3.3.1 Syntactic parser and the narrow sense of “language” 3.3.2 Language in the broad sense Language: Not only syntax Language: Not only speech Language: Not only innateness 3.4 Stages 3.4.1 Baseline 3.4.2 Preadaptations 3.4.3 Prelinguistic communication 3.4.4 Protolanguage45 3.4.5 From protolanguage to language 3.5 Conclusions Chapter 4 Preadaptations for Language 4.1 Speech 4.2 Speech reception 4.3 The brain 4.4 Cognitive preadaptations 4.4.1 Mimesis 4.4.2 Theory of Mind 4.4.3 Metarepresentation 4.4.4 Memory 4.4.5 Executive functions 4.5 Summary Chapter 5 Cooperative Foundations: An Essential Requirement for Language 5.1 Signalling theory52 5.2 The evolutionary stability of communication 5.3 How to ensure the honesty of communication? 5.4 The sources of human cooperativeness 5.5 Summary Chapter 6 The Problem of Modality Transition in Gestural Primacy Hypothesis 6.1 Gestural primacy hypotheses in language evolution 6.2 Defining gestures 6.2.1 Gestures in interpersonal communication 6.2.2 Gestures in nonhuman primates’ communication 6.3 Arguments in favour of the gestural primacy hypotheses 6.3.1 Gesture and language origin – a brief historical background 6.3.2 Hewes’s position and the revival of concern with gesture in language evolution 6.3.3 Contemporary gestural hypotheses Iconicity of gestures Handedness and lateralisation Broca’s area and mirror neurons Mimesis and pantomime Further arguments 6.4 The problem of transition to speech 6.4.1 Homo sapiens’s adaptations to speech 6.4.2 Sign languages as fully-fledged languages 6.5 Solutions 6.5.1 Traditional arguments 6.5.2 Information duality 6.5.3 Acquisition of sign and spoken languages in children 6.5.4 Natural connections between the hand and the mouth 6.5.5 Articulatory movements as a type of gesture Orofacial gestures 6.6 Conclusion – Towards multimodal hypotheses? Epilogue References List of Figures Glossary Index of Names Subject Index