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	1–6
An Old Road Map to Draw Upon
Computational challenges of evolving the language-ready brain: 1. From manual action to protosign Michael A. Arbib	7–21
Computational challenges of evolving the language-ready brain: 2. Building towards neurolinguistics Michael A. Arbib	22–37
Starting from the Macaque
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	38–53
Plasticity, innateness, and the path to language in the primate brain: Comparing macaque, chimpanzee and human circuitry for visuomotor integration Erin Hecht	54–69
Voice, gesture and working memory in the emergence of speech Francisco Aboitiz	70–85
Bringing in Emotion
Relating the evolution of Music-Readiness and Language-Readiness within the context of comparative neuroprimatology Uwe Seifert	86–101
Why do we want to talk? Evolution of neural substrates of emotion and social cognition Katerina Semendeferi	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	121–135
Turn-taking and Prosociality
From sharing food to sharing information: Cooperative breeding and language evolution Judith M. Burkart, Eloisa Guerreiro Martins, Fabia Miss and Yvonne Zürcher	136–150
Social manipulation, turn-taking and cooperation in apes: Implications for the evolution of language-based interaction in humans Federico Rossano	151–c166
Language origins: Fitness consequences, platform of trust, cooperation, and turn-taking Sławomir Wacewicz and Przemysław Żywiczyński	167–182
Imitation, Pantomime and Development
The evolutionary roots of human imitation, action understanding and symbols Masako Myowa-Yamakoshi	183–199
Pantomime and imitation in great apes: Implications for reconstructing the evolution of language Anne E. Russon	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	216–238
Praxis, symbol and language: Developmental, ecological and linguistic issues Chris Sinha	239–255
Action, Tool Making and Language
Archaeology and the evolutionary neuroscience of language: The technological pedagogy hypothesis Dietrich Stout	256–271
Tracing the evolutionary trajectory of verbal working memory with neuro-archaeology Shelby S. Putt and Sobanawartiny Wijeakumar	272–288
From actions to events: Communicating through language and gesture James Pustejovsky	289–317
Meaning and Grammar Emerging
From evolutionarily conserved frontal regions for sequence processing to human innovations for syntax Benjamin Wilson and Christopher I. Petkov	318–335
The evolution of enhanced conceptual complexity and of Broca’s area: Language preadaptations P. Thomas Schoenemann	336–351
Mental travels and the cognitive basis of language Michael C. Corballis	352–369
The Road Map
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 C. Corballis, Gino Coudé, Erin Hecht, Katja Liebal, Masako Myowa-Yamakoshi, James Pustejovsky, Shelby S. Putt, Federico Rossano, Anne E. Russon, P. Thomas Schoenemann, Uwe Seifert, Katerina Semendeferi, Chris Sinha, Dietrich Stout, Virginia Volterra, Sławomir Wacewicz and Benjamin Wilson	370–387
Index	389–393

“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 1 other publications

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

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 april 2021. 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.

Subjects & Metadata

Linguistics

Cognition and language

Evolution of language

Neurolinguistics

Psycholinguistics

BIC Subject: JMM – Physiological & neuro-psychology, biopsychology

BISAC Subject: PSY020000 – PSYCHOLOGY / Neuropsychology

ONIX Metadata

ONIX 2.1

ONIX 3.0

U.S. Library of Congress Control Number: 2020023476 | Marc record