The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution (Oxford Handbooks in Linguistics)

In The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution, sixty leading scholars present critical accounts of every aspect of the field. Its five parts are devoted to insights from comparative animal behaviour; the biology of language evolution; the prehistory of language; 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 the evolution of human andanimal communication more generally. This book presents a wide-ranging summation of work in all the disciplines involved. It highlights the links between different lines of research, shows what has been achieved, and considers promising directions for the future.

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.

Maggie Tallerman, Newcastle University,Kathleen R. Gibson, University of Texas Houston

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. She is the co-editor with Kathleen Gibson of the series, Oxford Studies in the Evolution of Language.


Kathleen 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 Maggie Tallerman of the series, Oxford Studies in the Evolution of Language.