How the Brain Evolved Language

by Donald Loritz

Overview

How can an infinite number of sentences be generated from one human mind? How did language evolve in apes? In this book Donald Loritz addresses these and other fundamental and vexing questions about language, cognition, and the human brain. He starts by tracing how evolution and natural adaptation selected certain features of the brain to perform communication functions, then shows how those features developed into designs for human language. The result -- what Loritz calls an adaptive grammar -- gives a unified explanation of language in the brain and contradicts directly (and controversially) the theory of innateness proposed by, among others, Chomsky and Pinker.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190287986
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	02/28/2002
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Georgetown University

Table of Contents

1	Lought and Thanguage	3
2	Jones's Theory of Evolution	21
3	The Communicating Cell	36
4	The Society of Brain	52
5	Adaptive Resonance	74
6	Speech and Hearing	90
7	Speech Perception	109
8	One, Two, Three	123
9	Romiet and Juleo	133
10	Null Movement	143
11	Truth and Consequences	161
12	What If Language Is Learned by Brain Cells?	171
	Notes	195
	References	203
	Index	219