How the Brain Got Language – Towards a New Road Map

Editor

Michael A. Arbib | University of California at San Diego, La Jolla

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027207623 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027260673 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00

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).

[Benjamins Current Topics, 112] 2020. vii, 393 pp.

Publishing status: Available

https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.112

Table of Contents

Introducing the Volume: “How the brain got language: Towards a new road map”

Michael A. Arbib | pp. 1–6

Computational challenges of evolving the language-ready brain: 1. From manual action to protosign

Michael A. Arbib | pp. 7–21

Computational challenges of evolving the language-ready brain: 2. Building towards neurolinguistics

Michael A. Arbib | pp. 22–37

Reflections on the differential organization of mirror neuron systems for hand and mouth and their role in the evolution of communication in primates

Gino Coudé and Pier Francesco Ferrari | pp. 38–53

Plasticity, innateness, and the path to language in the primate brain: Comparing macaque, chimpanzee and human circuitry for visuomotor integration

Erin Hecht | pp. 54–69

Voice, gesture and working memory in the emergence of speech

Francisco Aboitiz | pp. 70–85

Relating the evolution of Music-Readiness and Language-Readiness within the context of comparative neuroprimatology

Uwe Seifert | pp. 86–101

Why do we want to talk? Evolution of neural substrates of emotion and social cognition

Katerina Semendeferi | pp. 102–120

Mind the gap – moving beyond the dichotomy between intentional gestures and emotional facial and vocal signals of nonhuman primates

Katja Liebal and Linda Oña | pp. 121–135

From sharing food to sharing information: Cooperative breeding and language evolution

Judith Burkart, Eloisa Guerreiro Martins, Fabia Miss and Yvonne Zürcher | pp. 136–150

Social manipulation, turn-taking and cooperation in apes: Implications for the evolution of language-based interaction in humans

Federico Rossano | pp. 151–166

Language origins: Fitness consequences, platform of trust, cooperation, and turn-taking

Sławomir Wacewicz and Przemysław Żywiczyński | pp. 167–182

The evolutionary roots of human imitation, action understanding and symbols

Masako Myowa-Yamakoshi | pp. 183–199

Pantomime and imitation in great apes: Implications for reconstructing the evolution of language

Anne E. Russon | pp. 200–215

From action to spoken and signed language through gesture: Some basic developmental issues for a discussion on the evolution of the human language-ready brain

Virginia Volterra, Olga Capirci, Pasquale Rinaldi and Laura Sparaci | pp. 216–238

Praxis, symbol and language: Developmental, ecological and linguistic issues

Chris Sinha | pp. 239–255

Archaeology and the evolutionary neuroscience of language: The technological pedagogy hypothesis

Dietrich Stout | pp. 256–271

Tracing the evolutionary trajectory of verbal working memory with neuro-archaeology

Shelby S. Putt and Sobanawartiny Wijeakumar | pp. 272–288

From actions to events: Communicating through language and gesture

James Pustejovsky | pp. 289–317

From evolutionarily conserved frontal regions for sequence processing to human innovations for syntax

Benjamin Wilson and Christopher I. Petkov | pp. 318–335

The evolution of enhanced conceptual complexity and of Broca’s area: Language preadaptations

P. Thomas Schoenemann | pp. 336–351

Mental travels and the cognitive basis of language

Michael C. Corballis | pp. 352–369

The comparative neuroprimatology 2018 (CNP-2018) road map for research on How the Brain Got Language

Michael A. Arbib, Francisco Aboitiz, Judith M. Burkart, Michael Corballis, Gino Coudé, Erin Hecht, Katja Liebal, Masako Myowa-Yamakoshi, James Pustejovsky, Shelby Putt, Federico Rossano, Anne E. Russon, P. Thomas Schoenemann, Uwe Seifert, Katerina Semendeferi, Chris Sinha, Dietrich Stout, Virginia Volterra, Sławomir Wacewicz and Benjamin Wilson | pp. 370–387

“As I see it, this volume provides a fascinating and well-connected mix of approaches to the development of the faculty of language in humans; it will be useful from the last courses of undergraduate programs to the explorations of senior researchers. It provides a new perspective on language research and makes clear the necessity of a multidisciplinary approach. It makes clear as well the need for the integration into the new models of developmental and biological information about both humans and apes, taking into account social and cultural context without forgetting the computation challenges.”

Pamela Villar González, University of Warsaw, on Linguist List 32.2164 (24 June 2021)

Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Arbib, Michael

2024. Chapter 1. Pantomime within and beyond the evolution of language. In Perspectives on Pantomime [Advances in Interaction Studies, 12], ► pp. 16 ff.

Hartmann, Stefan & Michael Pleyer

2021. Constructing a protolanguage: reconstructing prehistoric languages in a usage-based construction grammar framework. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 376:1824

Menon, Swathi Sivakumar & Vinod Balakrishnan

2022. Theorizing Language Evolution Using NCT and Conlangs: An Etiological Study. Journal on Asian Linguistic Anthropology 4:2 ► pp. 70 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 15 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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