Former library copy. Pages intact with possible writing/highlighting. Binding strong with minor wear. Dust jackets/supplements may not be included. Includes library markings. Stock photo provided. Product includes identifying sticker. Better World Books: Buy Books. Do Good.

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Bibliographic Details

Title: Adam's Tongue : How Humans Made Language, How Language Made Humans
Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Publication Date: 2009
Language: English
ISBN 10: 0809022818
ISBN 13: 9780809022816
Binding: Hardcover
Edition: 1st Edition.
Condition: Very Good
Weight: 1.133 pounds

About this title

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 that thoroughly integrates 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 the Author

Derek Bickerton is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of Hawaii. His most recent book, Bastard Tongues, was published by Hill and Wang in 2008.

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