Bücher der Reihe Studies in the Evolution of Language

Combining neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and linguistics, this title explores questions about the origins of speech. It puts forward the proposal that speech can be spontaneously generated by the coupling of evolutionarily simple neural structures connecting perception and production, and tests this hypothesis through a computational system.

Addresses universal tendencies of human vowel systems from the point of view of self-organization. This work uses computer simulations to show that the same universal tendencies found in human languages can be reproduced in a population of artificial agents. It also explores the implications of these results for the evolution of language.

Explores the co-evolutionary paths of biology, culture, and the great human edifice of language, linking the evolution of the language to the general evolutionary history of humankind. This book provides answers to such fundamental paradoxes as to whether we acquired our greatest gift in order to talk or so as to be able to think, and more.

How humans acquired language and how languages evolved are two of the most intriguing questions in contemporary scientific research. The essays in this volume discuss the subject.

Traces language back to its earliest origins among our distant ape-like forbears several million years ago. This book examines the qualities of mind and brain needed to support the operations of language; investigates the first links between signs, sounds, and meanings; explores the beginnings and prehistories of vocabulary and grammar; and more.

This book considers the evolution of the grammatical structure of words in the contexts of human evolution and the origins of language. The author challenges the conventional views of the relationship between syntax and morphology, the adaptationist view of language evolution, and the notion that language in some way reflects 'laws of form'.