MI CH A EL S TU D DE RT -KE NNE DY Haskins Laboratories University of Connecticut City University of New York The Evolutionary Emergence of Language Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic FormĬHRI S K N I G H T University of East London He is perhaps best known for his computer simulations of various aspects of the evolution of language. He is the author of many books, including Language and Number: The Emergence of a Cognitive System (1987), and was coeditor of Approaches to the Evolution of Language (1998). Hurford has been Professor of General Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh since 1979. He has published numerous articles on speech perception and speech development and edited or coedited several books, including Psychobiology of Language (1983) and Approaches to the Evolution of Language (1998). Michael Studdert-Kennedy is past President of Haskins Laboratories and Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Connecticut and of Communications at the City University of New York. He has also authored many book chapters and journal articles on human cognitive and linguistic evolution and was coeditor of Approaches to the Evolution of Language (1998). His highly acclaimed and widely debated first book, Blood Relations: Menstruation and the Origins of Culture (1991), outlined a new theory of human origins. It will be welcomed by all those interested in human evolution, evolutionary psychology, linguistic anthropology and general linguistics.Ĭhris Knight is Reader in Anthropology at the University of East London. This book, presenting language as a remarkable social adaptation, testifies to the growing influence of evolutionary thinking in contemporary linguistics. Distinctively human social and cultural strategies gave rise to the complex syntactic structure of speech. Phonetic competence correspondingly reflects social pressures for vocal imitation, learning and other forms of social transmission. As a feature of human social intelligence, language evolution is driven by biologically anomalous levels of social cooperation. But how, when and why did it emerge? The contributors to this volume – linguists, anthropologists, cognitive scientists and others – adopt a modern Darwinian perspective to offer a bold synthesis of the human and natural sciences. Unique to Homo sapiens, it appears inseparable from human nature. The Evolutionary Emergence of Language Language has no counterpart in the animal world.
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