Author : Juan-Carlos Moreno (Linguist)
Publisher : Equinox Publishing (UK)
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 11,95 MB
Release : 2014
Category : Biolinguistics
ISBN : 9781781790526
Human language is viewed by some as a natural object and by other scholars as a social and cultural object. Actually it manifests itself as a tightly entangled bundle of natural and cultural features. This book proposes ways to disentangle this complex feature bundle in order to show that often what seems contradictory is really complementary.
Author : Jeroen C. J. M. van den Bergh
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 575 pages
File Size : 38,73 MB
Release : 2018-10-18
Category : Nature
ISBN : 1108470971
A complete account of evolutionary thought in the social, environmental and policy sciences, creating bridges with biology.
Author : John P. Herron
Publisher : UNM Press
Page : 172 pages
File Size : 46,35 MB
Release : 1999
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9780826319166
Provocative essays explore how ideas about human nature inform or shape human understanding of nature and the environment.
Author : Robert C. Berwick
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 229 pages
File Size : 25,53 MB
Release : 2017-05-12
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 0262533499
Berwick and Chomsky draw on recent developments in linguistic theory to offer an evolutionary account of language and humans' remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire it. “A loosely connected collection of four essays that will fascinate anyone interested in the extraordinary phenomenon of language.” —New York Review of Books We are born crying, but those cries signal the first stirring of language. Within a year or so, infants master the sound system of their language; a few years after that, they are engaging in conversations. This remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire any human language—“the language faculty”—raises important biological questions about language, including how it has evolved. This book by two distinguished scholars—a computer scientist and a linguist—addresses the enduring question of the evolution of language. Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky explain that until recently the evolutionary question could not be properly posed, because we did not have a clear idea of how to define “language” and therefore what it was that had evolved. But since the Minimalist Program, developed by Chomsky and others, we know the key ingredients of language and can put together an account of the evolution of human language and what distinguishes us from all other animals. Berwick and Chomsky discuss the biolinguistic perspective on language, which views language as a particular object of the biological world; the computational efficiency of language as a system of thought and understanding; the tension between Darwin's idea of gradual change and our contemporary understanding about evolutionary change and language; and evidence from nonhuman animals, in particular vocal learning in songbirds.
Author : Joseph Henrich
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 464 pages
File Size : 12,73 MB
Release : 2017-10-17
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 0691178437
How our collective intelligence has helped us to evolve and prosper Humans are a puzzling species. On the one hand, we struggle to survive on our own in the wild, often failing to overcome even basic challenges, like obtaining food, building shelters, or avoiding predators. On the other hand, human groups have produced ingenious technologies, sophisticated languages, and complex institutions that have permitted us to successfully expand into a vast range of diverse environments. What has enabled us to dominate the globe, more than any other species, while remaining virtually helpless as lone individuals? This book shows that the secret of our success lies not in our innate intelligence, but in our collective brains—on the ability of human groups to socially interconnect and learn from one another over generations. Drawing insights from lost European explorers, clever chimpanzees, mobile hunter-gatherers, neuroscientific findings, ancient bones, and the human genome, Joseph Henrich demonstrates how our collective brains have propelled our species' genetic evolution and shaped our biology. Our early capacities for learning from others produced many cultural innovations, such as fire, cooking, water containers, plant knowledge, and projectile weapons, which in turn drove the expansion of our brains and altered our physiology, anatomy, and psychology in crucial ways. Later on, some collective brains generated and recombined powerful concepts, such as the lever, wheel, screw, and writing, while also creating the institutions that continue to alter our motivations and perceptions. Henrich shows how our genetics and biology are inextricably interwoven with cultural evolution, and how culture-gene interactions launched our species on an extraordinary evolutionary trajectory. Tracking clues from our ancient past to the present, The Secret of Our Success explores how the evolution of both our cultural and social natures produce a collective intelligence that explains both our species' immense success and the origins of human uniqueness.
Author : National Academy of Sciences
Publisher :
Page : 388 pages
File Size : 33,88 MB
Release : 2007
Category : Science
ISBN :
The Arthur M. Sackler Colloquia of the National Academy of Sciences address scientific topics of broad and current interest, cutting across the boundaries of traditional disciplines. Each year, four or five such colloquia are scheduled, typically two days in length and international in scope. Colloquia are organized by a member of the Academy, often with the assistance of an organizing committee, and feature presentations by leading scientists in the field and discussions with a hundred or more researchers with an interest in the topic. Colloquia presentations are recorded and posted on the National Academy of Sciences Sackler colloquia website and published on CD-ROM. These Colloquia are made possible by a generous gift from Mrs. Jill Sackler, in memory of her husband, Arthur M. Sackler.
Author : Daniel L. Everett
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 356 pages
File Size : 47,49 MB
Release : 2012-03-13
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 0307907023
A bold and provocative study that presents language not as an innate component of the brain—as most linguists do—but as an essential tool unique to each culture worldwide. For years, the prevailing opinion among academics has been that language is embedded in our genes, existing as an innate and instinctual part of us. But linguist Daniel Everett argues that, like other tools, language was invented by humans and can be reinvented or lost. He shows how the evolution of different language forms—that is, different grammar—reflects how language is influenced by human societies and experiences, and how it expresses their great variety. For example, the Amazonian Pirahã put words together in ways that violate our long-held under-standing of how language works, and Pirahã grammar expresses complex ideas very differently than English grammar does. Drawing on the Wari’ language of Brazil, Everett explains that speakers of all languages, in constructing their stories, omit things that all members of the culture understand. In addition, Everett discusses how some cultures can get by without words for numbers or counting, without verbs for “to say” or “to give,” illustrating how the very nature of what’s important in a language is culturally determined. Combining anthropology, primatology, computer science, philosophy, linguistics, psychology, and his own pioneering—and adventurous—research with the Amazonian Pirahã, and using insights from many different languages and cultures, Everett gives us an unprecedented elucidation of this society-defined nature of language. In doing so, he also gives us a new understanding of how we think and who we are.
Author : Stephen Vickers Boyden
Publisher : UNSW Press
Page : 210 pages
File Size : 45,56 MB
Release : 2004
Category : History
ISBN : 9780868407661
Looks at the complex interrelationships between human culture and the nature. Covering the period from the beginning of agriculture right up to the present day, it focuses on issues relating to human health and well-being and the state of our natural environment. From his vast survey, author Stephen Boyden draws some key conclusions critical to the future of humanity.
Author : Mark Pagel
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 431 pages
File Size : 40,40 MB
Release : 2012-02-07
Category : Science
ISBN : 0393065871
A fascinating, far-reaching study of how our species' innate capacity for culture altered the course of our social and evolutionary history. A unique trait of the human species is that our personalities, lifestyles, and worldviews are shaped by an accident of birth—namely, the culture into which we are born. It is our cultures and not our genes that determine which foods we eat, which languages we speak, which people we love and marry, and which people we kill in war. But how did our species develop a mind that is hardwired for culture—and why? Evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel tracks this intriguing question through the last 80,000 years of human evolution, revealing how an innate propensity to contribute and conform to the culture of our birth not only enabled human survival and progress in the past but also continues to influence our behavior today. Shedding light on our species’ defining attributes—from art, morality, and altruism to self-interest, deception, and prejudice—Wired for Culture offers surprising new insights into what it means to be human.
Author : Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 16,60 MB
Release : 2014-10-02
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 1443868655
This book discusses the nature and definition of what a word is in Linguistics. This is not an easy task since the term subsumes a wide range of phenomena explored from an even wider array of perspectives. Although words are the most accessible linguistic units from the speaker’s introspection viewpoint, they are, at the same time, an incredibly elusive reality for the linguist. Issues such as their definition, theoretical status, limits, characteristics, and psycholinguistic reality are still controversial and open for debate. This book offers an up-to-date overview of the latest discussions on the nature of word in Modern Linguistics. It gathers together under a single collective volume different views of what a word is from a wide range of diverse methodological and theoretical linguistic frameworks, such as phonological theory, linguistic typology, lexical generative morphology, generative syntax, cognitive grammar, and construction grammar. Despite their different backgrounds, all these papers are geared towards the same goal: to offer a detailed account of what a word is in their respective fields. All in all, this collection of papers offers different perspectives that will contribute to provide some answers to the myriad of questions that a simple phrase such as to be or not to be a Word brings to the fore.
