Origin and Evolution of Languages has a strong interdisciplinary flavor 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 and 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, and 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.

lgrsnf/AN 639866.pdf - Unknown.pdf

Bernard Laks; Serge Cleuziou; Jean-Paul Demoule; Pierre Encrevé

edited by Bernard Laks ... [et al.]

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

Oakville, CT, Connecticut, 2007

Repr, London, 2009

Illustrated, 2009

March 30, 2008

London, 2008

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Cover
Contents
Chapter 1
1. Retrospectives and perspectives
2. The fascination of origins: the great foundation stories
3. Races and languages
4. From diachrony to synchrony
5. Prehistory and migrations
6. Towards a new synthesis
7. The new paradigms
8. Origins and evolution of languages: retrospectives and perspectives
Notes
References
Chapter 2
1. The expansion of modern humans and the standard model of human evolution
2. The importance of language in promoting the expansion of modern humans
3. The correlation of the tree of genes and that of languages
4. Examples of language replacements
5. Agricultural expansions and the spread of language families in the last 10,000 years
6. Independent evolutionary histories confirming the standard model
References
Chapter 3
1. Introduction
2. Languages of the Caucasus, with special reference to Azerbaijani
3. The Indo‐Europeanization of Europe
4. The anglicization of England
5. Conclusions
Acknowledgment
References
Chapter 4
1. Organisms as documents
2. A poor design feature: tolerance of allomorphy
3. A poor design feature: grammatical functions
4. A poor design feature: the distinction between sentences and nominal expressions
5. Conclusion
Acknowledgment
References
Chapter 5
1. Introduction
2. Methodological issues
3. Some things that are not reliable evidence
4. The futility of modern lexical comparisons as evidence of Proto-World
5. Structural speculations
6. Society and language complexity
7. What of the structure of the earliest human language(s)?
8. Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 6
1. The evolutionary grounding of grammar in conceptual structure
2. The role of communication in language origins
3. The rejection of the classical position on the origins of grammar
4. Language users represent full grammatical structure, however pared down their actual utterances are
5. A three-stage model for the evolution of grammar
6. Grammatical change is syntagmatic, not paradigmatic
7. Grammars do not necessarily do what is useful for the language user
8. Departures from strict conceptual structure – grammatical structure match ups
9. Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 7
1. Central discoveries of CIT
2. The mystery of language
3. Existing theories
4. A range of arresting human singularities
5. What should a proper theory of language look like?
6. The central problem of language
7. Gradients of conceptual integration and the emergence of language
8. The origin of cognitively modern humans
Acknowledgement
Notes
References
Chapter 8
1. The genealogical model
2. Classical comparativism and its critics
3. Genealogical comparativism: the comeback
4. Opening
Notes
References
Chapter 9
1. Simulations as theories
2. The expansion of the Assyrian empire
3. The expansion of farming in Europe
4. Origins and differentiation of European languages
5. Demic or cultural?
6. Further developments of the model
7. Conclusion
References
Chapter 10
1. The linguistic situation
2. Linguistic relationships
3. The non-Indo-European languages of ancient Europe
4. Linguistic palaeontology and comparative mythology
5. In conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 11
1. Eurasiatic
2. Language in the Americas
3. Global etymologies
4. Human origins
References
Chapter 12
1. Principles
2. Application of principles in detail
3. The cycle of language replication and its consequences
4. Complications
5. Nontrivial contact phenomena
6. Future research
Notes
References
Chapter 13
1.Introduction
2. Why creoles have not developed from pidgins
3. Why creoles were not made by children
4. Do creoles tell us something about the evolution of language in mankind?
5. What creoles tell us about the evolution of language
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Chapter 14
1. Sumerians in the Garden of Eden: newcomers or earlier inhabitants?
2. Some methodological aspects
3. The early roots of Sumerian’s archaeology
4. Mesopotamia and the east: Elam and beyond
5. From colonies to Urukian wars and people from the north
6. Concluding remarks
Notes
References
Index of authors
Index of languages
Index of subjects

2024-10-11