Origins of Language: A Slim Guide (Oxford Linguistics)

Origins of Language: A Slim Guide offers a concise and accessible overview of what is known about the evolution of the human capacity for language. Non-human animals communicate in simple ways: they may be able to form simple concepts, to feel some limited empathy for others, to cooperate to some extent, and to engage in mind-reading. Human language, however, is characterized by its ability to efficiently express a wide range of subtle and complex meanings. After the first simple beginnings, human language underwent an explosion of complexity, leading to the very complicated systems of grammar and pronunciation found in modern languages. Jim Hurford looks at the very varied aspects of this evolution, covering human prehistory; the relation between instinct and learning; biology and culture; trust, altruism, and cooperation; animal thought; human and non-human vocal anatomy; the meanings and forms of the first words; and the growth of complex systems of grammar and pronunciation. Written by an internationally recognized expert in the field, it draws on a number of disciplines besides linguistics, including philosophy, neuroscience, genetics, and animal behaviour, and will appeal to a wide range of readers interested in language origins and evolution.

Origins of Language: A Slim Guide

Reference

Hurford, James R.

Words, Language & Grammar

Oxford University Press

Origins of Language: A Slim Guide offers a concise and accessible overview of what is known about the evolution of the human capacity for language. Non-human animals communicate in simple ways: they may be able to form simple concepts, to feel some limited empathy for others, to cooperate to some extent, and to engage in mind-reading. Human language, however, is characterized by its ability to efficiently express a wide range of subtle and complex meanings. After the first simple beginnings, human language underwent an explosion of complexity, leading to the very complicated systems of grammar and pronunciation found in modern languages. Jim Hurford looks at the very varied aspects of this evolution, covering human prehistory; the relation between instinct and learning; biology and culture; trust, altruism, and cooperation; animal thought; human and non-human vocal anatomy; the meanings and forms of the first words; and the growth of complex systems of grammar and pronunciation. Written by an internationally recognized expert in the field, it draws on a number of disciplines besides linguistics, including philosophy, neuroscience, genetics, and animal behaviour, and will appeal to a wide range of readers interested in language origins and evolution.

In this, the first of two ground-breaking volumes on the nature of language in the light of the way it evolved, James Hurford looks at how the world first came to have a meaning in the minds of animals and how in humans this meaning eventually came to be expressed as language. He reviews a mass of evidence to show how close some animals, especially primates and more especially apes, are to the brink of human language. Apes may not talk to us but they construct rich cognitive representations of the world around them, and here, he shows, are the evolutionary seeds of abstract thought - the means of referring to objects, the memory of events, even elements of the propositional thinking philosophers have hitherto reserved for humans. What then, he asks, is the evolutionary path between the non-speaking minds of apes and our own speaking minds? Why don't apes communicate the richness of their thoughts to each other? Why do humans alone have a unique disposition to reveal their thoughts in complex detail? Professor Hurford searches a wide range of evidence for the answers to these central questions, including degrees of trust, the role of hormones, the ability to read minds, and the willingness to cooperate. Expressing himself congenially in consistently colloquial language the author builds up a vivid picture of how mind, language, and meaning evolved over millions of years. His book is a landmark contribution to the understanding of linguistic and thinking processes, and the fullest account yet published of the evolution of language and communication. "A wonderful read - lucid, informative, and entertaining, while at the same time never talking down to the reader by sacrificing argumentation for the sake of 'simplicity'. Likely to be heralded as the major publication dealing with language evolution to date. Frederick J. Newmeyer, University of Washington

The Origins of Meaning (Oxford Studies in the Evolution of Language)

Politics & Social Sciences

Anthropology

This is the second of the two closely linked but self-contained volumes that comprise James Hurford's acclaimed exploration of the biological evolution of language. In the first book he looked at the evolutionary origins of meaning, ending as our distant ancestors were about to step over the brink to modern language. He now considers how that step might have been taken and the consequences it undoubtedly had. The capacity for language lets human beings formulate and express an unlimited range of propositions about real or fictitious worlds. It allows them to communicate these propositions, often overlaid with layers of nuance and irony, to other humans who can then interpret and respond to them. These processes take place at breakneck speed. Using a language means learning a vast number of arbitrary connections between forms and meanings and rules on how to manipulate them, both of which a normal human child can do in its first few years of life. James Hurford looks at how this miracle came about. The book is divided into three parts. In the first the author surveys the syntactic structures evident in the communicative behaviour of animals, such as birds and whales, and discusses how vocabularies of learned symbols could have evolved and the effects this had on human thought. In the second he considers how far the evolution of grammar depended on biological or cultural factors. In the third and final part he describes the probable route by which the human language faculty and languages evolved from simple beginnings to their present complex state.

Language in the Light of Evolution, Vol. 2: The Origins of Grammar

Oudeyer combines insights from neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and linguistics to explore questions about the origins of speech. He puts forward the startling proposal that speech can be spontaneously generated by the coupling of evolutionarily simple neural structures connecting perception and production. He tests this hypothesis through a computational system and shows that the linking of auditory and vocal motor neural nets produces syntactic rules that exhibit the fundamental properties of modern human speech systems. This fascinating account will interest all those interested in the evolution of speech.

Self-Organization in the Evolution of Speech (Studies in the Evolution of Language)

Oudeyer, Pierre-Yves

What is the origins of speech? How speech systems of languages form and evolve? How a child learns speech? Can robots invent and learn their own vocalisation system? How constructing robot can help us understand better humans? This book studies these questions, following a systemic approach, where the problem is approached globally. It gather human sciences, natural sciences and computational sciences within the same laboratory of ideas to explore the origins of language. It draws some parallels with the formation of biological structures like bee hives and shell shapes, and explore how self-organisation, in interaction with natural selection, can explain important aspects of the morphogenesis of speech. In particular, it presents robotic experiments in which a population of individuals, with models of the vocal tract and the auditory system, invent, form and negotiate its own system of combinatorial vocalisations, through local peer-to-peer interactions. It compares the emergent systems with human sound systems, and show that strong similarities can be observed. In this context, and from new perspectives on artificial intelligence, new scientific maps appear, and show us stimulating paths to the origins of speech.

Self-Organization in the Evolution of Speech (Oxford Studies in the Evolution of Language)

Foreign Language Study & Reference

The Linguistic Theory of Numerals (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, Series Number 16)

Originally published in 1975, this was the first detailed linguistic study of natural language numeral systems. It draws on two quite different scholarly traditions. The first is carried on by anthropologists and others compiling and cataloguing data on the different counting-systems of the world. The second explores generative grammar, which analyses the universal features and the formal organisation of these numeral systems. Dr Hurford is able to extend and modify the detailed theory of generative grammar by testing it against this material and discovering the rules, conventions and constraints which apply. He includes separate chapters on the numeral systems of English, French, Mixtec, Hawaiian, Danish, Welsh and Yoruba; the book is therefore also a contribution to the grammars of these languages. The book is primarily intended for linguists, but there is an introduction to the relevant principles of generative grammar in the first chapter, to help make the work accessible also to anthropologists and mathematicians.

Cambridge University Press

This elementary coursebook has been carefully planned to introduce students to all the main elements of semantics in a simple, step-by-step fashion. Students begin by discovering the value and fascination of studying semantics, and move on to such topics as sense and reference, basic sense relations, simple logic, word meaning, and interpersonal meaning. Each unit of the course includes short sections of explanation and exemplification followed by stimulating practice exercises for the student to complete. Sections of answers and comment enable students accurately to monitor their progress through the course. The innovatory pedagogical structure will be helpful to students following introductory courses in Linguistics and to intermediate students who will find it a useful revision text. The coursebook will also meet the needs of those who wish genuinely to teach themselves about semantics.

Semantics: A Coursebook

Heasley, Brendan

Grammar: A Student's Guide

This introductory guide to grammar explains one hundred basic grammatical terms. A knowledge of such terms, and how they interconnect, is crucial for an understanding of the structure and function of language. The explanations are listed alphabetically for easy reference, like a dictionary, but offer much more than a simple definition. Each entry is divided into sections, providing a clear explanation, examples, exercises, and highlighting the main contrasts and interrelationships between the terms. Clearly written and easy to use, this book will be an invaluable source of information for students of language and linguistics.

Cambridge Univ Pr

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hurford, James R.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Hurford, James R.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hurford, James R.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Origins of Language: A Slim Guide

Origins of Language: A Slim Guide (Oxford Linguistics)

The Origins of Meaning (Oxford Studies in the Evolution of Language)

Language in the Light of Evolution, Vol. 2: The Origins of Grammar

Self-Organization in the Evolution of Speech (Studies in the Evolution of Language)

Self-Organization in the Evolution of Speech (Oxford Studies in the Evolution of Language)

The Linguistic Theory of Numerals (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, Series Number 16)

The Linguistic Theory of Numerals (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, Series Number 16)

Semantics: A Coursebook

Grammar: A Student's Guide