The Origins of Language: What Nonhuman Primates Can Tell You

by King, Barbara J.

• ISBN13: 9780933452596
• ISBN10: 0933452594
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-11-01
• Publisher: Univ of New Mexico Pr

Summary

Ten anthropologists trade thoughts and findings on primatology and language origins in the papers they prepared for an October 1996 seminar. Their topics include social organization, gestural repertoire size, and communication dynamics; ape language; continuity and discontinuity in language origins; and the invention and ritualization of language.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
List of Tables	x
Preface	xi
Introduction: Primatological Perspectives on Language	3	(18)
Barbara J. King
Viewed from Up Close: Monkeys, Apes, and Language-Origins Theories	21	(34)
Barbara J. King
Primate Social Organization, Gestural Repertoire Size, and Communication Dynamics: A Comparative Study of Macaques	55	(24)
Dorio Maestripieri
An Empiricist View of Language Evolution and Development	79	(36)
Charles T. Snowdon
Ape Language: Between a Rock and Hard Place	115	(74)
Sue Savage-Rumbaugh
Language Evolution and Expansions of Multiple Neurological Processing Areas	189	(40)
Kathleen R. Gibson
Stephen Jessee
The Game of the Name: Continuity and Discontinuity in Language Origins	229	(40)
Iain Davidson
Children's Transition to Language: A Human Model for Development of the Vocal Repertoire in Extant and Ancestral Primate Species?	269	(38)
Lorraine McCune
Motivation, Conventionalization, and Arbitrariness in the Origin of Language	307	(44)
Robbins Burling
The Invention and Ritualization of Language	351	(34)
Sherman Wilcox
References	385	(48)
Index	433