Origin and Evolution of Languages has a strong interdisciplinary flavour designed to highlight the true complexity of the debates in the field. Many of the models and theories conjectured can only receive their validation from a convergence of arguments developed across ...MORE ⇓
Origin and Evolution of Languages has a strong interdisciplinary flavour designed to highlight the true complexity of the debates in the field. Many of the models and theories conjectured can only receive their validation from a convergence of arguments developed across disciplines. The book underscores this dimension by including contribution from disciplines that have been wary, traditionally, of extending beyond their borders: linguistics (different branches thereof), philosophy, history and prehistory, archaeology, anthropology, genetics, computer-modelling. The presentation is intended to encompass both the agreements and disjunctures characteristic of the field and insisted on laying open propositions that clearly differ from, possibly even enter into contradiction with one another. While several teams of researchers active in the fields of genetics, linguistics, anthropology and archaeology have come up with new proposals in favor of the `New Synthesis,' many competing hypotheses and models continue to be explored in areal linguistics, language contact, wave-like diffusion. On the anthropological scene, criticisms of the monogenetic model have set up new debates and counter-arguments. Approaching the issue of the origin and evolution of human languages within a Darwinian paradigm remains problematic. On the archaeological scene, not all reconstructions are proving compatible with current models for the circulation of techniques, myths and cultures. On the linguistic scene, raising again the issue of the origin / evolution of humankind and of languages in an evolutionary, cognitive, social and cultural perspective or in terms of generational transmission and acquisition, may induce a reconsideration of linguistic theories in search of universals as well as most theories of change and variation. All contributors are world-renowned experts in their domain.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction. -- Serge Cleuziou, Jean Paul Demoule, Pierre Encreve, Bernard Laks
Part One : ab originem
2. Genetic evolution and the evolution of languages. -- L.L.Cavalli-Sforza
3. Languages, genes, and prehistory, with special reference to europe. -- Bernard Comrie
4. Poor design features in language as clues to its prehistory. -- Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy
5. What can we learn about the earliest human language by comparing languages known today? -- Lyle Campbell
6. Conceptualization, communication, and the origins of grammar. -- Frederick J. Newmeyer
7. The origin of language as a product of the evolution of modern cognition. -- Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner
Part Two : post originem
8. Genetics and language: comparatism and genealogy in perspective. -- Bernard Laks
9. Simulating the expansion of farming and the differentiation of european languages. -- Domenico Parisi, Francesco Antinucci, Francesco Natale, Federico Cecconi
10. On Renfrew's hypothesis of the near-eastern origins of the indo-european urheimat. -- Jean-Paul Demoule
11. New perspectives on the origin of languages. -- Merrit Ruhlen
12. Linguistic history and computational cladistics. -- Don Ringe and Tandy Warnow
13. What do creoles and pidgins tell us about the evolution of languages? -- Salikoko S. Mufwene
14. Linguistics and archeology. -- Serge Cleuziou