Language Origins: From Mythology to Science (Dis/Continuities)

Description

The science of language evolution appeared at the end of the last century but topically belongs to language origins – the domain of investigation that is concerned with the beginnings and diversification of language. Language evolution as a research area contrasts with the antiquity of language origins, which can be traced back to the earliest forms of traditional reflection. Language evolution emphasises its scientific orientation, whereas throughout most of its history language origins constituted a complex mixture of mythology, philosophy of language, as well as religiously and scientifically inspired speculation. This work is the first book-long attempt to document the whole history of language origins and situate language evolution in this wide intellectual context. Cover Contents Introduction 0.1 Motivation for the book 0.2 Organisation of the material 0.3 Methodological problems 0.4 Main sources 1 Divine origins of language and languages 1.1 Glottogonic myths 1.2 Glossogenetic myths 2 The problem of the Adamic language 2.1 Definition of the Adamic problem and its textual basis 2.2 The Kabbalah 2.3 The forbidden experiment 2.4 Dante’s “illustrious vernacular” 2.5 Etymological eccentricities 2.6 Babel reinterpreted 2.7 Beyond Adam and Babel 3 Language and language origins in ancient and medieval philosophy 3.1 Plato’s mimetic naturalism 3.2 Aristotle’s linguistic conventionalism and objectivism 3.3 Epicureans and Stoics on language and its origin 3.4 The problem of universals 3.5 Augustine’s linguistic scepticism 3.6 Aquinas and the speculative grammarians 4 Naturalistic glottogony 4.1 Epicurean inspirations 4.2 The search for a new definition of humankind 4.3 Lord Monboddo’s scientific speculations 4.4 Empiricists vs. rationalists and the problem of language 4.5 The Mandeville-Condillac thought-experiment 4.6 Rousseau on human evolution 4.7 Herder on representations and language origins 4.8 Les Idéologues 5 Linguistics, Darwinism and the twilight of traditional language origins 5.1 Humboldt’s conception of language as activity 5.2 The rise of comparative philology 5.2.1 Comparative philology, biology and Darwinism 5.2.2 Comparative philology and language origins 5.3 Darwin on linguistic change, anthropogenesis and the origin of language 5.4 How language origins became a taboo: from bans on glottogonic speculation to de Saussure 5.5 Jespersen’s plea against the taboo 5.6 Tylor’s natural language and the orofacial hypothesis 6 The science of language evolution 6.1 Linguistics, gesture studies and language origins 6.2 The Chomskyan factor 6.3 The empirical factor 6.3.1 Primate ethology and ape language experiments 6.3.2 Genetics 6.3.3 Palaeoanthropology and archaeology 6.3.4 Neuroscience 6.4 Modern evolutionism: the Kuhnian factor 6.5 The science of language evolution: a new era of language origins 6.6 SLE’s characteristics 6.7 Terminological conundrums 6.8 In what sense is the science of language evolution a science? Concluding remarks References List of figures and tables Index of names Index of subjects