Adam's Tongue: How Humans Made Language, How Language Made Humans - Softcover

Bickerton, Derek

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0809016478 ISBN 13: 9780809016471

Publisher: Hill and Wang, 2010

Synopsis

How language evolved has been called "the hardest problem in science." In Adam's Tongue, Derek Bickerton―long a leading authority in this field―shows how and why previous attempts to solve that problem have fallen short. Taking cues from topics as diverse as the foraging strategies of ants, the distribution of large prehistoric herbivores, and the construction of ecological niches, Bickerton produces a dazzling new alternative to the conventional wisdom.

Language is unique to humans, but it isn't the only thing that sets us apart from other species―our cognitive powers are qualitatively different. So could there be two separate discontinuities between humans and the rest of nature? No, says Bickerton; he shows how the mere possession of symbolic units―words―automatically opened a new and different cognitive universe, one that yielded novel innovations ranging from barbed arrowheads to the Apollo spacecraft.

Written in Bickerton's lucid and irreverent style, this book is the first to thoroughly integrate the story of how language evolved with the story of how humans evolved. Sure to be controversial, it will make indispensable reading both for experts in the field and for every reader who has ever wondered how a species as remarkable as ours could have come into existence.'

About this title

About the Author

Derek Bickerton is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of Hawaii. His book Bastard Tongues was published in 2008, and Adam’s Tongue in 2009.

Edition details

• Publisher: Hill and Wang
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0809016478
• ISBN 13: 9780809016471
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304