Ideophones And The Evolution Of Language

This book argues that ideophones provide the 'missing link' in our knowledge of how communication has evolved to become the spoken language of today.

The biological and neurological capacity to symbolize, and the products of behavioral, cognitive, sociocultural, linguistic, and technological uses of symbols (symbolism), are fundamental to every aspect of human life. The Oxford Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution explores the origins of our characteristically human abilities - our ability to speak, create images, play music, and read and write. The book investigates how symbolization evolved in human evolution and how symbolism is expressed across the various areas of human life. The field is intrinsically interdisciplinary - considering findings from fossil studies, scientific research from primatology, developmental psychology, and of course linguistics. Written by world leading experts, thirty-eight topical chapters are grouped into six thematic parts that respectively focus on epistemological, psychological, anthropological, ethological, linguistic, and social-technological aspects of human symbolic evolution. The handbook presents an in-depth but comprehensive and interdisciplinary overview of the of the state of the art in the science of human symbolic evolution. This work will be of interest to academics and students active in all fields contributing to the study of human evolution.

This volume explores new frontiers in the linguistic study of iconic lexemes known as ideophones, mimetics, and expressives. A large part of the literature on this long-neglected word class has been dedicated to the description of its sound symbolism, marked morphophonology, and grammatical status in individual languages. Drawing on data from Asian (especially Japanese), African, American, and European languages, the twelve chapters in this volume aim to establish common grounds for theoretical and crosslinguistic discussions of the phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, acquisition, and variation of iconic lexemes. Not only researchers who are interested in linguistic iconicity but also theoretical linguists and typologists will benefit from the updated insights presented in each study.

Developments in cognitive science indicate that human and nonhuman primates share a range of behavioral and physiological characteristics that speak to the issue of language origins. This volume has three major themes, woven throughout the chapters. First, it is argued that scientists in animal behavior and anthropology need to move beyond theoretical debate to a more empirically focused and comparative approach to language. Second, those empirical and comparative methods are described, revealing underpinnings of language, some of which are shared by humans and other primates and others of which are unique to humans. New insights are discussed, and several hypotheses emerge concerning the evolutionary forces that led to the "design" of language. Third, evolutionary challenges that led to adaptive changes in communication over time are considered with an eye toward understanding various constraints that channeled the process.

This volume investigates iconicity as to both comprehension and production of meaning in language, gesture, pictures, art and literature. It highlights iconic processes in meaning-making and interpretation across different semiotic systems at structurally, historically and pragmatically different levels of iconicity, with special focus on Cognitive Semiotics. Exploring the ubiquity of iconicity in verbal, visual and gestural communication, these contributions discuss it from the point of view of human meaning-making, examined as a phenomenon that is experienced, embodied and often polysemiotic in nature.

The discipline of linguistics is a perfect example of the limitations of the modern academy. The combination of social taboos that make certain subject matter unfit for general knowledge and discovery, and the ever-narrowing specialization of scientists leaves us with an intellectual institution that can no longer do anything but apply, repair, and justify the dogma of Victorian Cosmology that is the rule all must follow. Linguistics should be one of the most interesting subjects, considering it is the study of our most valuable and revealing cultural asset, language. However, recent publications from the linguistic department for public consumption have been some of the most trivial and boring intellectual expositions that have ever been put between two covers. Using the entire database of science, we look at the acquisition of language and how it forms our cultural perspective on life, including theories of language evolution. We develop the theory of the evolution of language from song, one of the few suppositions that Charles Darwin actually got right. From this basis we move on to the roots of Proto-Indo-European, which we call Bhear Tongue. Bhear Tongue is essentially the Eurasian language family dimly perceived by one of the greatest linguists of the twentieth century, Joseph Greenberg. From this perspective we can now retell the tribal stories from Iberia to Siberia, showing a common origin and motivation for human science and religion.

How human language evolved from the need for social communication The origins of human language remain hotly debated. Despite growing appreciation of cognitive and neural continuity between humans and other animals, an evolutionary account of human language—in its modern form—remains as elusive as ever. The Social Origins of Language provides a novel perspective on this question and charts a new path toward its resolution. In the lead essay, Robert Seyfarth and Dorothy Cheney draw on their decades-long pioneering research on monkeys and baboons in the wild to show how primates use vocalizations to modulate social dynamics. They argue that key elements of human language emerged from the need to decipher and encode complex social interactions. In other words, social communication is the biological foundation upon which evolution built more complex language. Seyfarth and Cheney’s argument serves as a jumping-off point for responses by John McWhorter, Ljiljana Progovac, Jennifer E. Arnold, Benjamin Wilson, Christopher I. Petkov and Peter Godfrey-Smith, each of whom draw on their respective expertise in linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology. Michael Platt provides an introduction, Seyfarth and Cheney a concluding essay. Ultimately, The Social Origins of Language offers thought-provoking viewpoints on how human language evolved.

The contributors to this volume are linguists, psychologists, neuroscientists, primatologists, and anthropologists who share the assumption that language, just as mind and brain, are products of biological evolution. The rise of human language is not viewed as a serendipitous mutation that gave birth to a unique linguistic organ, but as a gradual, adaptive extension of pre-existing mental capacities and brain structures. The contributors carefully study brain mechanisms, diachronic change, language acquisition, and the parallels between cognitive and linguistic structures to weave a web of hypotheses and suggestive empirical findings on the origins of language and the connections of language to other human capacities. The chapters discuss brain pathways that support linguistic processing; origins of specific linguistic features in temporal and hierarchical structures of the mind; the possible co-evolution of language and the reasoning about mental states; and the aspects of language learning that may serve as models of evolutionary change.