The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution

Leading scholars present critical accounts of every aspect of the field, including work in animal behaviour; anatomy, genetics and neurology; the prehistory of language; the development of our uniquely linguistic species; and language creation, transmission, and change.

In The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution, sixty leading scholars present critical accounts of every aspect of the field. The Volume's five parts are devoted to insights from comparative animal behaviour; the biology of language evolution (anatomy, genetics, and neurology); the prehistory of language (when and why did language evolve?); the development of a linguistic species; and language creation, transmission, and change. Research on language evolution has burgeoned over the last three decades. Interdisciplinary activity has produced fundamental advances in the understanding of language evolution and in human and primate evolution more generally. This book presents a wide-ranging summation of work in all the disciplines involved. It highlights the links in different lines of research, shows what has been achieved to date, and considers the most promising directions for future work. The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution will be valued by everyone interested in one of the most productive and fascinating fields in natural and cognitive science.

1 - Introduction: The evolution of language
2 - Introduction to Part 1: Insights from comparative animal behaviour
3 - Language or Protolanguage? A review of the ape language literature
4 - Primate Social Cognition as a Precursor to Language
5 - Cooperative Breeding and the Evolution of Vocal Flexibility
6 - Gesture as the Most Flexible Modality of Primate Communication
7 - Have we Underestimated Great Ape Vocal Capacities?
8 - Bird Song and Language
9 - Vocal Communication and Cognition in Cetaceans
10 - Evolution of Communication and Language: Insights from parrots and songbirds
11 - Are Other Animals as Smart as Great Apes? Do Others Provide Better Models for the Evolution of Speech or Language?
12 - Introduction to Part 2: The Biology of Language Evolution: Anatomy, genetics, and neurology
13 - Innateness and Human Language: A biological perspective
14 - Evolutionary Biological Foundations of the Origin of Language: The co-evolution of language and brain
15 - Genetic Influences on Languaeg Evolution: An evaluation of the evidence
16 - Not the Neocortex Alone: Other brain structures also contribute to speech and language
17 - The Mimetic Origins of Language
18 - Evolution of Behavioural and Brain Asymmetries in Primates
19 - Toward an Evolutionary Biology of Language Through Comparative Neuroanatomy
20 - Mirror Systems: Evolving imitation and the bridge from praxis to language
21 - Cognitive Prerequisites for the Evolution of Indirect Speech
22 - The Anatomical and Physiological Basis of Human Speech production: Adaptations and exaptations
23 - Introduction to Part 3: The pre-history of Language: When and why did language evolve?
24 - Molecular Perspectives on Human Evolution
25 - The Fossil Record: Evidence for speech in early hominins
26 - The Genus Homo and the Origins of 'Humanness'
27 - The Palaeolithic Record
28 - Musicality and Language
29 - Linguistic Implications of the Earliest Personal Ornaments
30 - Inferring Modern Language From Ancient Objects
31 - Natural Selection-itis
32 - The Role of Honimim Mothers and Infants in Prelinguistic Evolution
33 - Infant-directed Speech and Language Evolution
34 - Displays of Vocal and Verbal Complexity: A fitness account of language, situated in development
35 - Tool-dependent Foraging Strategies and the Origin of Language
36 - Gossip and the Social Origins of Langauge
37 - Social Conditions for teh Evolutionary Emergence of Language
38 - Introduction to Part 4: Launching Language: The development of a linguistic species
39 - The Role of Evolution in Shaping the Human Language Faculty
40 - The Origins of Meaning
41 - The Origins of Language in Manual Gestures
42 - From Sensorimotor Categories and Pantomime to Grounded Symbols and Propositions
43 - The Symbol Concept
44 - Words Came First: Adaptations for word-learning
45 - The Emergence of Phonetic Form
46 - The Evolution of Phonology
47 - The Evolution of Morphology
48 - What is Syntax?
49 - The Origins of Syntactic Language
50 - The Evolutionary Relevance of More and Less Complex Forms of Language
51 - Protolanguage
52 - The Emergence of Language, From a Biolinguistic Point of View
53 - Introduction to Part 5: Language Change, Creation, and Transmission
54 - Grammaticalization Theory as a Tool for Reconstructing Language Evolution
55 - Domain-general Processes as the Basis for Grammar
56 - Pidgins, Creoles, and the Creation of Language
57 - What Modern-day Gesture can tell us About Language Evolution
58 - Monogenesis or Polygenesis: A single ancestral language for all humanity?
59 - Prehistoric Population Contact and Language Change
60 - Why Formal Models are Useful for Evolutionary Linguists
61 - Language is an Adaptive System: The role of cultural evolution in the origins of structure
62 - Robotics and Embodied Agents Modelling of the Evolution of Language
63 - Self-organization and Language Evolution
64 - Statistical Learning and Language Acquisition
65 - A Solution of the Logical Problem of Language Evolution: Language as an adaptation to the human brain

Maggie Tallerman is Professor of Linguistics at Newcastle University. She has spent her professional life in North East England, having previously taught for 21 years at Durham University. Her research interests centre on the origins and evolution of syntax and morphology; modern Brythonic Celtic syntax and morphology; and language typology. Her publications include Understanding Syntax (Hodder/OUPUSA, 1998; 3rd edn. 2011); with Robert D. Borsley and David Willis, The Syntax of Welsh (CUP, 2007); and, as editor, Language Origins: Perspectives on Evolution (OUP, 2005). She is also the editor of the series Palgrave Modern Linguistics. Kathleen R. Gibson is Professor Emerita, Neurobiology and Anatomy, University of Texas Houston. Her co-edited books include, with Sue T. Parker, Language' and Intelligence in Monkeys and Apes (CUP 1990); with Tim Ingold, Tools, Language, and Cognition in Human Evolution (CUP 1993); with Paul Mellars, Modelling the Early Human Mind (McDonald Archaeological Institute 1996); and, with Dean Falk, Evolutionary Anatomy of the Human Neocortex (CUP 2001). She is the co-editor with James R. Hurford of the series, Oxford Studies in the Evolution of Language.