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Apr 18, 2019 · During his travel to Egypt, Herodotus heard that Psammetichus ("Psamṯik") sought to discover the origin of language by conducting an experiment with two children.
Jan 1, 2013 · PDF | This chapter is a selective comparative and critical survey of speculations/hypotheses, since Antiquity, on the phylogenetic emergence of language... | Find, read and cite all the...
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Two kinds of theories have dominated recent discussion of the origin of language (see Pinker & Bloom 1990): a continuity approach and its counterpart, a discontinuity approach (see Table 3.1).
- Interdisciplinarity
- From Models to Paradigms
- Uniqueness
- Compatibilism
Several disciplines contribute to the discussion on the origin of language: computer simulation, cognitive psychology, genetics, paleoanthropology, and comparative studies, as some examples (see Tallerman and Gibson 2012). Some disciplines employ sophisticated analysis techniques resulting in empirical evidence inconceivable until a few years ago. ...
Many scholars interested in language origin research (e.g., Bickerton 2012; Tattersall this volume) have explicitly assumed Chomsky’s model of language, that of Universal Grammar (UG), which is still relevant in the current debate (e.g., Hauser et al. 2014) despite some criticism (e.g., Tomasello 2009; Pennisi and Falzone 2016; Corballis 2017). Bio...
Biolinguistics presents several aspects that need to be analyzed. In our opinion, when it comes to the origins of language, the reference to a refined and well-established model of language represents both the strength and weakness of such paradigm. More specifically, the problematic issue is represented by uniqueness—an issue in the Chomskyan pers...
In our view, the first attempt made by Pinker and Bloom (1990) to integrate Chomsky’s model of language in an evolutionary context is an example of the limitations of the biolinguistic paradigm. Assuming UG as the indisputable starting point of the argument, Pinker and Bloom disputed Chomsky in proving UG to be compatible with the theory of evoluti...
- Francesco Ferretti, Ines Adornetti, Alessandra Chiera, Erica Cosentino, Serena Nicchiarelli
- 2018
1) Was language given to humans by God or did it emerge by Darwinian evolution, which assumes exaptation, variation, competition, and natural selection, depending on how ecology rolls the dice?
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Attempts to shed light on the evolution of human language have come from many areas including studies of primate social behavior (4–6), the diversity of existing human languages (7, 8), the development of language in children (9–11), and the genetic and anatomical correlates of language competence (12–16), as well as theoretical studies of cultu...
David McNeill challenges the popular “gesture-first” theory that language first emerged in a gesture-only form, and proposes a ground-breaking theory of the evolution of language which explains how speech and gesture became unified. david mcneill is Professor Emeritus in the Departments of Psy-chology and Linguistics at the University of Chicago.
