Introduction

Chapters in this book

1. Prelim pages i
2. Table of contents v
3. Preface vii
4. Introduction ix
5. Part 1. General perspectives and issues on language origins
6. Historical, Darwinian, and current perspectives on the origin(s) of language 3
7. The origin of language as seen by eighteenth-century philosophy 31
8. Cognitive and social aspects of language origins 53
9. Part 2. At the roots of language
10. Reconstructed fossil vocal tracts and the production of speech 75
11. Paleoanthropology and language 129
12. Material culture and language 147
13. Gestural theory of the origins of language 171
14. Part 3. Communication and language origins
15. Primate communication 187
16. FoxP2 and vocalization 211
17. Brain lateralization and the emergence of language 237
18. Sensorimotor constraints and the organization of sound patterns 257
19. Symbol grounding and the origin of language 279
20. Part 4. Linguistic views on language origins
21. Sound patterns and conceptual content of the first words 301
22. Brave new words 333
23. On the origin of Grammar 379
24. Arbitrary signs and the emergence of language 407
25. On the relevance of pidgins and creoles in the debate on the origins of language 441
26. Part 5. Computational modeling of language origins
27. Modeling cultural evolution 487
28. How language emerges in situated embodied interactions 505
29. Emergence of communication and language in evolving robots 533
30. Evolving a bridge from praxis to language 555
31. Index 579