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The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain

Author: Terrence W. Deacon

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 1998-04-17

Total Pages: 532

ISBN-13: 0393343022

"A work of enormous breadth, likely to pleasantly surprise both general readers and experts."—New York Times Book Review This revolutionary book provides fresh answers to long-standing questions of human origins and consciousness. Drawing on his breakthrough research in comparative neuroscience, Terrence Deacon offers a wealth of insights into the significance of symbolic thinking: from the co-evolutionary exchange between language and brains over two million years of hominid evolution to the ethical repercussions that followed man's newfound access to other people's thoughts and emotions. Informing these insights is a new understanding of how Darwinian processes underlie the brain's development and function as well as its evolution. In contrast to much contemporary neuroscience that treats the brain as no more or less than a computer, Deacon provides a new clarity of vision into the mechanism of mind. It injects a renewed sense of adventure into the experience of being human.

The Symbolic Species Evolved

Author: Theresa Schilhab

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-03-23

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 9400723369

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This anthology is a compilation of the best contributions from Symbolic Species Conferences I, II (which took place in 2006, 2007). In 1997 the American anthropologist Terrence Deacon published The Symbolic Species: The Coevolution of Language and the Brain. The book is widely considered a seminal work in the subject of evolutionary cognition. However, Deacons book was the first step – further steps have had to be taken. The proposed anthology is such an important associate. The contributions are written by a wide variety of scholars each with a unique view on evolutionary cognition and the questions raised by Terrence Deacon - emergence in evolution, the origin of language, the semiotic 'missing link', Peirce's semiotics in evolution and biology, biosemiotics, evolutionary cognition, Baldwinian evolution, the neuroscience of linguistic capacities as well as phylogeny of the homo species, primatology, embodied cognition and knowledge types.

The Symbolic Species

Author: Terrence William Deacon

Publisher:

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 527

ISBN-13:

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How the Brain Evolved Language

Author: Donald Loritz

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2002-02-28

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0190287985

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How can an infinite number of sentences be generated from one human mind? How did language evolve in apes? In this book Donald Loritz addresses these and other fundamental and vexing questions about language, cognition, and the human brain. He starts by tracing how evolution and natural adaptation selected certain features of the brain to perform communication functions, then shows how those features developed into designs for human language. The result -- what Loritz calls an adaptive grammar -- gives a unified explanation of language in the brain and contradicts directly (and controversially) the theory of innateness proposed by, among others, Chomsky and Pinker.

The Symbolic Species

Author: Terrence William Deacon

Publisher: W W Norton & Company Incorporated

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 527

ISBN-13: 9780393038385

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Discusses the evolution of language from the viewpoint of symbolic reference as opposed to the conventional grammar-based theories

Birdsong, Speech, and Language

Author: Johan J. Bolhuis

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 557

ISBN-13: 0262018608

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Scholars have long been captivated by the parallels between birdsong and human speech and language. In this book, leading scholars draw on the latest research to explore what birdsong can tell us about the biology of human speech and language and the consequences for evolutionary biology. They examine the cognitive and neural similarities between birdsong learning and speech and language acquisition, considering vocal imitation, auditory learning, an early vocalization phase ("babbling"), the structural properties of birdsong and human language, and the striking similarities between the neural organization of learning and vocal production in birdsong and human speech. After outlining the basic issues involved in the study of both language and evolution, the contributors compare birdsong and language in terms of acquisition, recursion, and core structural properties, and then examine the neurobiology of song and speech, genomic factors, and the emergence and evolution of language.

The Unfolding of Language

Author: Guy Deutscher

Publisher: Metropolitan Books

Published: 2006-05-02

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 1466837837

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Blending the spirit of Eats, Shoots & Leaves with the science of The Language Instinct, an original inquiry into the development of that most essential-and mysterious-of human creations: Language "Language is mankind's greatest invention-except, of course, that it was never invented." So begins linguist Guy Deutscher's enthralling investigation into the genesis and evolution of language. If we started off with rudimentary utterances on the level of "man throw spear," how did we end up with sophisticated grammars, enormous vocabularies, and intricately nuanced degrees of meaning? Drawing on recent groundbreaking discoveries in modern linguistics, Deutscher exposes the elusive forces of creation at work in human communication, giving us fresh insight into how language emerges, evolves, and decays. He traces the evolution of linguistic complexity from an early "Me Tarzan" stage to such elaborate single-word constructions as the Turkish sehirlilestiremediklerimizdensiniz ("you are one of those whom we couldn't turn into a town dweller"). Arguing that destruction and creation in language are intimately entwined, Deutscher shows how these processes are continuously in operation, generating new words, new structures, and new meanings. As entertaining as it is erudite, The Unfolding of Language moves nimbly from ancient Babylonian to American idiom, from the central role of metaphor to the staggering triumph of design that is the Semitic verb, to tell the dramatic story and explain the genius behind a uniquely human faculty.

The Symbolic Species

Author: Terrence W. Deacon

Publisher:

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 527

ISBN-13: 9780140264050

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Human language is one of the most distinctive behavioural adaptations on the planet. Languages evolved in only one species, in only one way, without precedent, and without parallel. Hundreds of millions of years of evolution have produced hundreds of thousands of species with brains, and tens of thousands with complex learning abilities. Only one of these has ever wondered about its place in the whole scheme, because only one - through its language - evolved with the ability to do so. This book aims to alter the understanding of what it means to be human: the universe isn't a soulless, blindly spinning clockwork, but instead nascent hear and mind.

Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter

Author: Terrence W. Deacon

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 625

ISBN-13: 0393049914

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Examines the emergent processes that bridge the gap between organisms that think and have consciousness and those that do not and discusses the origins of life, information, and free will.

Journey of the Universe

Author: Brian Thomas Swimme

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2011-06-28

Total Pages: 191

ISBN-13: 0300171900

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The authors tell the epic story of the universe from an inspired new perspective, weaving the findings of modern science together with enduring wisdom found in the humanistic traditions of the West, China, India, and indigenous peoples. This book is part of a larger project that includes a documentary film, educational DVD series, and Web site.