Approaches to the Evolution of Language: Social and Cognitive Ba

Approaches to the Evolution of LanguageSocial and Cognitive Bases\nAuthor(s): James R. Hurford, Michael Studdert-Kennedy, Chris Knight\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9780521639644, 978-0521639644\nSynopsis\nThis is one of the first systematic attempts to bring language within the neo-Darwinian framework of modern evolutionary theory, without abandoning the vast gains in phonology and syntax achieved by formal linguistics over the past forty years. The contributors, linguists, psychologists, and paleoanthropologists, address such questions as: what is language as a category of behavior; is it an instrument of thought or of communication; what do individuals know when they know a language; what cognitive, perceptual, and motor capacities must they have to speak, hear, and understand a language? For the past two centuries, scientists have tended to see language function as largely concerned with th.