HUMANA.MENTE – Journal of Philosophical Studies

http://www.humanamente.eu/

Issue 27, December 2014

Origin and Evolution of Language

Editors: Francesco Ferretti – Ines Adornetti

Understanding the origin and evolution of language has been defined — rather provocatively — as thehardest problem in science (Christiansen & Kirby, 2003). To be sure, the study of the development of language is a subject that consistently generates great interest and controversy. The interest is largely dependent on the fact that a great part of Western theoretical investigation has attributed the “uniqueness” that characterizes our species to our “talking nature”: language constitutes the element that, more than any others, defines what it is to be human
 


INTRODUCTION

Francesco Ferretti, Ines Adornetti

Origin and Evolution of Language: a Close Look at Human Nature

PAPERS

Lluís Barceló-Coblijn

On the Relationship between the Air Sacs Loss in the Genus Homo and Duality of Patterning

Teresa Bejarano

From Holophrase to Syntax: Intonation and the Victory of Voice over Gesture

Michael C. Corballis

The Gradual Evolution of Language

Erica Cosentino

Embodied Pragmatics and the Evolution of Language

Peter Gärdenfors

The Evolution of Sentential Structure

José Luis Guijarro

The Origin of Languages. A Constrained Set of Hypotheses

James R. Hurford

What is Wrong, and What is Right, about Current Theories of Language, in the Light of Evolution?

Adrien Meguerditchian, Jacques Vauclair

Communicative Signaling, Lateralization and Brain Substrate in Nonhuman Primates: Toward a Gestural or a Multimodal Origin of Language?

Antonino Pennisi, Alessandra Falzone

Residuals of Intelligent Design in Contemporary Theories about Language Nature and Origins

Ian Tattersall

Language as a Critical Factor in the Emergence of Human Cognition

Jordan Zlatev

Human Uniqueness, Bodily Mimesis and the Evolution of Language

Ines Adornetti

Making Tools and Planning Discourse: the Role of Executive Functions in the Origin of Language

Francesco Ferretti

Travelling in Time and Space at the Origins of Language

COMMENTARIES

Alessandra Chiera

Origins of Human Communication

by Michael Tomasello

BOOK REVIEWS

Silvia Felletti

The Recursive Mind. The Origins of Human Language, Thought, and Civilization

by Michael C. Corballis

Serena Nicchiarelli

More than Nature Needs. Language, Mind, and Evolution

by Derek Bickerton