How the Brain Got Language – Towards a New Road Map

How the Brain Got Language – Towards a New Road Map PDF Author: Michael A. Arbib
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027260672
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
How did humans evolve biologically so that our brains and social interactions could support language processes, and how did cultural evolution lead to the invention of languages (signed as well as spoken)? This book addresses these questions through comparative (neuro)primatology – comparative study of brain, behavior and communication in monkeys, apes and humans – and an EvoDevoSocio framework for approaching biological and cultural evolution within a shared perspective. Each chapter provides an authoritative yet accessible review from a different discipline: linguistics (evolutionary, computational and neuro), archeology and neuroarcheology, macaque neurophysiology, comparative neuroanatomy, primate behavior, and developmental studies. These diverse perspectives are unified by having each chapter close with a section on its implications for creating a new road map for multidisciplinary research. These implications include assessment of the pluses and minuses of the Mirror System Hypothesis as an “old” road map. The cumulative road map is then presented in the concluding chapter. Originally published as a special issue of Interaction Studies 19:1/2 (2018).

How the Brain Got Language – Towards a New Road Map

How the Brain Got Language – Towards a New Road Map PDF Author: Michael A. Arbib
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027260672
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 403

Get Book

Book Description
How did humans evolve biologically so that our brains and social interactions could support language processes, and how did cultural evolution lead to the invention of languages (signed as well as spoken)? This book addresses these questions through comparative (neuro)primatology – comparative study of brain, behavior and communication in monkeys, apes and humans – and an EvoDevoSocio framework for approaching biological and cultural evolution within a shared perspective. Each chapter provides an authoritative yet accessible review from a different discipline: linguistics (evolutionary, computational and neuro), archeology and neuroarcheology, macaque neurophysiology, comparative neuroanatomy, primate behavior, and developmental studies. These diverse perspectives are unified by having each chapter close with a section on its implications for creating a new road map for multidisciplinary research. These implications include assessment of the pluses and minuses of the Mirror System Hypothesis as an “old” road map. The cumulative road map is then presented in the concluding chapter. Originally published as a special issue of Interaction Studies 19:1/2 (2018).

Oxford Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution

Oxford Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution PDF Author: Nathalie Gontier
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192543512
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 1185

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Book Description
The biological and neurological capacity to symbolize, and the products of behavioral, cognitive, sociocultural, linguistic, and technological uses of symbols (symbolism), are fundamental to every aspect of human life. The Oxford Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution explores the origins of our characteristically human abilities - our ability to speak, create images, play music, and read and write. The book investigates how symbolization evolved in human evolution and how symbolism is expressed across the various areas of human life. The field is intrinsically interdisciplinary - considering findings from fossil studies, scientific research from primatology, developmental psychology, and of course linguistics. Written by world leading experts, thirty-eight topical chapters are grouped into six thematic parts that respectively focus on epistemological, psychological, anthropological, ethological, linguistic, and social-technological aspects of human symbolic evolution. The handbook presents an in-depth but comprehensive and interdisciplinary overview of the of the state of the art in the science of human symbolic evolution. This work will be of interest to academics and students active in all fields contributing to the study of human evolution.

Signed Language and Gesture Research in Cognitive Linguistics

Signed Language and Gesture Research in Cognitive Linguistics PDF Author: Terry Janzen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110703785
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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Book Description
This volume represents the first time that researchers on signed language and gesture have come together with a coherent focus under the framework of cognitive linguistics. The pioneering work of Sherman Wilcox is highlighted throughout, scaffolding much of the research of these contributors. The five sections of the volume reflect critical areas of Dr. Wilcoxs own research in cognitive linguistics: Guiding research principles in signed language, gesture, and cognitive linguistics, iconicity across signed and spoken linguistics, multimodality, blending, depiction and metaphor in signed languages, and specific grammatical constructions as form-meaning pairings. The authors of this volume exemplify and continue Dr. Wilcoxs work of bridging signed and spoken language disciplines by contributing chapters that represent a multiplicity of perspectives on signed, spoken, and gesture data. This volume presents a unified collection of cognitive linguistics research by leading authors that will be of interest to readers in the fields of signed and spoken language linguistics, gesture studies, and general linguistics.

Perspectives on Pantomime

Perspectives on Pantomime PDF Author: Przemysław Żywiczyński
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027247242
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Pantomime is a unique form of communication, which we improvise “on the fly” to transmit information when unable to use language, for example during intercultural contacts or when the use of language is blocked or constrained, as in the case of some medical conditions or the game of charades. Pantomimic communication has been investigated from a number of perspectives, including neuropsychological, developmental and gesture research. Recently, pantomime has come under the attention of evolutionary linguistics as a strong candidate for a precursor of verbal communication. The volume Perspectives on pantomime: evolution, development, interaction brings together authors who are at the forefront of these studies, which challenge the notion that pantomime is merely a fallback mode of expression. This multidisciplinary journey traverses language evolution, cognitive science, cognitive semiotics, sign language linguistics, psychology and gesture studies to unveil the profound role that pantomime plays in human communication.

Narrative Persuasion. A Cognitive Perspective on Language Evolution

Narrative Persuasion. A Cognitive Perspective on Language Evolution PDF Author: Francesco Ferretti
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031092066
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 149

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Book Description
This book explores the evolutionary and cognitive foundations of human communication, focusing on narrative as its distinctive dimension. Within a framework of continuity with both the communication of our hominin predecessors and that of non-human animals, the book is about a twofold proposal. It includes the idea that (human and animal) communication has an intrinsically persuasive nature along with the hypothesis that humans developed narrative forms of communication in order to enhance their persuasive abilities. In this view, narrative persuasion becomes the feature that distinguishes human communication from animal communication. The study of the transition from animal communication to language addresses both the selective pressures that led communication for persuasive purposes to take a narrative form and the cognitive architectures and expressive systems that enabled our ancestors to cope with the selective pressures of persuasive/narrative-based communication. Language evolution is interdisciplinary, even from the specific perspective of evolutionary pragmatics chosen here. Therefore, this book is intended for researchers working in fields such as cognitive sciences, philosophy, evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, and primatology. It also represents a valuable resource for advanced students in cognitive sciences, linguistics, and philosophy.

Johannes Gutenberg and the Shadow of Bi Sheng

Johannes Gutenberg and the Shadow of Bi Sheng PDF Author: Hans Giessen
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3658428651
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 131

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Book Description
Without language, not much else would exist: no writing, no computer – as a matter of fact, no technical or medical progress that make our lives less painful, and easier indeed; but also not some horrors that characterize our world. In fact, language is what defines humans and distinguishes them from other living beings – and is the basis of all other developments. How is it possible that something as complex and fascinating as 'language' has come into being at all? How does language 'work'? And how did it develop? What is common to all languages – and why are there so many? Further questions are how man began to write, and how printing developed – in which languages? Why not in any language? And does this teach us anything for further developments? In trying to answer these and other questions, we experience an exciting history of scientific research.

Italian Sign Language from a Cognitive and Socio-semiotic Perspective

Italian Sign Language from a Cognitive and Socio-semiotic Perspective PDF Author: Virginia Volterra
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027257841
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
This volume reveals new insights on the faculty of language. By proposing a new approach in the analysis and description of Italian Sign Language (LIS), that can be extended also to other sign languages, this book also enlightens some aspects of spoken languages, which were often overlooked in the past and only recently have been brought to the fore and described. First, the study of face-to-face communication leads to a revision of the traditional dichotomy between linguistic and enacted, to develop a new approach to embodied language (Kendon, 2004). Second, all structures of language take on a sociolinguistic and pragmatic meaning, as proposed by cognitive semantics, which considers it impossible to trace a separation between purely linguistic and extralinguistic knowledge. Finally, if speech from the point of view of its materiality is variable, fragile, and non-segmentable (i.e. not systematically discrete), also signs are not always segmentable into discrete, invariable and meaningless units. This then calls into question some of the properties traditionally associated with human languages in general, notably that of ‘duality of patterning’. These are only some of the main issues you will find in this volume that has no parallel both in sign and in spoken languages linguistic research.

How the Brain Got Language

How the Brain Got Language PDF Author: Michael A. Arbib
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199896690
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
Unlike any other species, humans can learn and use language. This book explains how the brain evolved to make language possible, through what Michael Arbib calls the Mirror System Hypothesis. Because of mirror neurons, monkeys, chimps, and humans can learn by imitation, but only "complex imitation," which humans exhibit, is powerful enough to support the breakthrough to language. This theory provides a path from the openness of manual gesture, which we share with nonhuman primates, through the complex imitation of manual skills, pantomime, protosign (communication based on conventionalized manual gestures), and finally to protospeech. The theory explains why we humans are as capable of learning sign languages as we are of learning to speak. This fascinating book shows how cultural evolution took over from biological evolution for the transition from protolanguage to fully fledged languages. The author explains how the brain mechanisms that made the original emergence of languages possible, perhaps 100,000 years ago, are still operative today in the way children acquire language, in the way that new sign languages have emerged in recent decades, and in the historical processes of language change on a time scale from decades to centuries. Though the subject is complex, this book is highly readable, providing all the necessary background in primatology, neuroscience, and linguistics to make the book accessible to a general audience.

Contemporary French Environmental Thought in the Post-COVID-19 Era

Contemporary French Environmental Thought in the Post-COVID-19 Era PDF Author: Keith Moser
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 303096129X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Contemporary French Environmental Thought in the Post-COVID-19 Era is focused on the fields of biosemiotics, linguistics, ecocriticism, and environmental ethics. Closely aligning with Sustainable Development Goal 13.1, Keith Moser’s study aims to strengthen resilience to climate-related hazards by drawing on ecological theories developed by French philosophers in conversation with biosemiotic principles. Not only does the novel theoretical framework offered by biosemiotic interpretations of the universe and our place in it represent an indispensable conceptual tool for understanding the unprecedented medical challenges at the dawn of a new millennium, but it also beckons us to think harder about the environmental crisis that threatens the continued existence of all sentient beings who call the biosphere home. This book also highlights the richness, diversity, and utility of the ecological theories developed by the French philosophers Michel Serres, Edgar Morin, Jacques Derrida, Dominique Lestel, and Michel Onfray in addition to how they engage with biosemiotic principles. Taken together, the book probes the scientific, linguistic, philosophical, and ethical implications of biosemiotic theories in a post-pandemic world from an environmental and medical perspective.

Linguistische Berichte Heft 276

Linguistische Berichte Heft 276 PDF Author: Markus Steinbach
Publisher: Helmut Buske Verlag
ISBN: 396769285X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : de
Pages : 123

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Book Description
Beiträge aus Forschung und Anwendung – Nanna Fuhrhop, Niklas Reinken & Jonas Romstadt: Der 'modalisierende' Gebrauch von Anführungszeichen in Abiturklausuren Abstract: Quotation marks are substantially used for direct speech and citations. For the 'modalizing' use, the Official Rules state that a "different understanding than usual" is indicated; they give very little information on the use of quotation marks beyond literal reference. It therefore seems all the more interesting to investigate the usage of modalizing quotation marks. In the present analysis, we studied the school-leaving examinations of an entire year. School-leaving examinations are texts by persons whose institutional acquisition of written language can be regarded as complete; they are texts written by skilled writers. The investigation takes into account both formal and functional observations. We recognized differences between school subjects that can be interpreted with regard to the concept of educational language. The writers described here showed a high sensitivity (conscious or unconscious) to the use of quotation marks, which we call the "struggle for educational language". This may be related to the corpus investigated here. However, our study constitutes a solid basis for further corpus studies on quotation marks. – Juliane Schwab, Jutta L. Mueller & Mingya Liu: Dimensions of variation in sentence comprehension: a case study on understating negative polarity items in German Abstract: Despite the rich theoretical and empirical literature on negative polarity items (NPIs) in general, understating NPIs like all that or much have received relatively little attention in psycholinguistics. In this paper, we investigate the comprehension, processing, and production of two such understating NPIs in German, namely 'sonderlich' ('particularly') and 'so recht' ('really'). In a first experiment, using self-paced reading and naturalness ratings, we found that 'sonderlich', contrary to 'so recht', was rated as natural in affirmative contexts although this environment is incompatible with NPIs. The finding is subsequently extended to the domain of sentence production, demonstrating that 'so recht' was consistently used as NPI, but 'sonderlich' was not. The last two experiments investigate the factors underlying this finding, showing that the surprising patterns for 'sonderlich' may relate to its susceptibility for interference from form- and meaning-related lexical competitors during tasks that strain cognitive resources, and, to some extent, to individual differences in participants' language aptitude measured through print exposure. Based on the novel empirical data, we discuss the theoretical status of 'sonderlich' and 'so recht' as understating NPIs, on the one hand, and the cognitive mechanisms affecting retrieval of their NPI-related lexical-semantic features, on the other. Rezensionen – Sophie Ellsäßer: Magali Paquot & Stefan Th. Gries (Hgg.) (2020): A practical handbook of corpus linguistics – Okan Kubus: Gary Morgan (ed.) (2020): Understanding deafness, language and development – Horst M. Müller: Michael A. Arbib (Hg.) (2020): How the brain got language – towards a new road map Informationen und Hinweise von Klaus Müllner und den Herausgeber*innen