Alibris: Language and languages Origin

AUDIOBOOKS | NEW BOOKS OF NOTE | BARGAIN BOOKS | Find a seller

» advanced search

Sale books bring joy to the world: Save 25% or more

Get your gifts by December 24: Learn how

browse BOOKS

Page 1 of 3

sort by

1	The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language more books like this by John McWhorter add to wishlist In this work, the author shares his expertise as a linguist to introduce us to Russonorsk, a creole of Russian and Norwegian once spoken by trading fur trappers in the summer, the ways in which Yiddish, a dialect of German, has been influenced by the grammar of Polish and a dialect of an Australian aboriginal language which only has three verbs. ... see all copies from $4.28! new only from $7.70! \| first editions \| SVS
2	The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention more books like this by Dr. Guy Deutscher add to wishlist Drawing on recent groundbreaking discoveries in modern linguistics, the author exposes the elusive forces of creation at work in human communication, giving fresh insight into how language emerges, evolves, and decays. see all copies from $1.99! new only from $1.99! \| first editions \| SVS
3	Language and Species more books like this by Derek Bickerton add to wishlist Language and Species presents the most detailed and well-documented scenario to date of the origins of language. Drawing on "living linguistic fossils" such as "ape talk," the "two-word" stage of small children, and pidgin languages, and on recent discoveries in paleoanthropology, Bickerton shows how a primitive "protolanguage" could have offered ... see all copies from $1.99! new only from $15.65! \| first editions \| SVS
4	The Talking Ape: How Language Evolved more books like this by Robbins Burling add to wishlist In this fascinating, mind-opening book, Robbins Burling presents the most convincing account of the origins of language ever published. He sheds new light on how language affects the way we think, behave, and relate to each other; and he gives us a deeper understanding of the nature of language itself. The author traces language back to its ... see all copies from $2.25! new only from $2.25! \| first editions \| SVS
5	Finding Our Tongues: Mothers, Infants, and the Origins of Language more books like this by Dean Falk add to wishlist A controversial new theory that the origins of spoken language, music, and art lie in the early communication between mothers and infants see all copies from $1.99! new only from $1.99! \| first editions \| SVS
6	The Transition to Language more books like this by Rafael C Gonzalez, PH.D., Professor Alison Wray (Editor) add to wishlist The evolutionary emergence of each facet of human language can be viewed as a 'transition'. This book explores how different transitions took place, their preconditions, and their consequences. Among the questions it addresses are: what physiological and psychological differences between us and other animals lie at the heart of our superior ... see all copies from $20.00! new only from $55.08!
7	Self-Organization in the Evolution of Speech more books like this by Pierre-Yves Oudeyer, James R Hurford (Translator) add to wishlist Speech is the principal supporting medium of language. In this book Pierre-Yves Oudeyer considers how spoken language first emerged. He presents an original and integrated view of the interactions between self-organization and natural selection, reformulates questions about the origins of speech, and puts forward what at first sight appears to be ... see all copies from $6.66! new only from $9.98! \| first editions
8	The Seeds of Speech: Language Origin and Evolution more books like this by Jean Aitchison add to wishlist Human language is a weird communication system: it has more in common with birdsong than with the calls of other primates. In this wide-ranging and accessible overview, Jean Aitchison explores the origins of human language and how it has evolved. She likens the search to a vast pre-historic jigsaw puzzle, in which numerous fragments of evidence ... see all copies from $1.99! new only from $8.75! \| first editions \| SVS
9	The Origins of Complex Language: An Inquiry Into the Evolutionary Beginnings of Sentences, Syllables, and Truth more books like this by Professor Andrew Carstairs-Mccarthy add to wishlist This book proposes a new theory of the origins of human language ability and presents an original account of the early evolution of language. It explains why humans are the only language-using animals, challenges the assumption that language is a consequence of intelligence, and offers a new perspective on human uniqueness. The author draws on ... see all copies from $14.50! new only from $55.12! \| first editions \| SVS
10	On the Origin of Languages: Studies in Linguistic Taxonomy more books like this by Merritt Ruhlen add to wishlist This book presents a series of illuminating studies which conclusively demonstrates that the prevailing conception of historical linguistics is deeply flawed. Most linguists today believe that there is no good evidence that the Indo-European family of languages is related to any other language family, or even any other language. In like manner, ... see all copies from $24.50! new only from $31.95! \| first editions
11 view cover	The Development of Language more books like this by David Lightfoot add to wishlist How and why do languages change over time? Could the way an individual child develops affect aggregate language change? What do the mechanisms of change tell us about the evolution of language in our species? To answer these questions, David Lightfoot looks closely at young children. A child develops a grammar on exposure to some triggering ... see all copies from $7.72! new only from $17.01! \| first editions
12 view cover	Why We Talk: The Evolutionary Origins of Language more books like this by Jean-Louis Dessalles, James Grieve (Translator) add to wishlist Jean-Louis Dessalles explores the co-evolutionary paths of biology, culture, and the great human edifice of language, linking the evolution of the language to the general evolutionary history of humankind. He provides searchingly original answers to such fundamental paradoxes as to whether we acquired our greatest gift in order to talk or so as to ... see all copies from $29.44! new only from $29.44!
13 view cover	The Emergence of the Speech Capacity more books like this by D Kimbrough Oller add to wishlist Recent studies of vocal development in infants have shed new light on old questions of how the speech capacity is founded and how it may have evolved in the human species. Vocalizations in the very first months of life appear to provide previously unrecognized clues to the earliest steps in the process by which language came to exist and the ... see all copies from $35.00! new only from $41.00! \| first editions
14 view cover	Language Evolution more books like this by Simon Kirby (Editor), Morten Christiansen (Editor) add to wishlist What is it that makes us human? This is one of the most challenging and important questions we face. Our species' defining characteristic is language - we appear to be unique in the natural world in having such an incredibly open-ended system for putting thoughts into words. If we are to truly understand ourselves as a species we must understand ... see all copies from $28.56! new only from $41.62! \| SVS
15 view cover	Evolutionary Epistemology, Language and Culture: A Non-Adaptationist, Systems Theoretical Approach more books like this by Nathalie Gontier (Editor), Jean Paul Van Bendegem (Editor), Diederik Aerts (Editor) add to wishlist For the first time in history, scholars working on language and culture from within an evolutionary epistemological framework, and thereby emphasizing complementary or deviating theories of the Modern Synthesis, were brought together. Of course, there have been excellent conferences on Evolutionary Epistemology in the past, as well as numerous ... see all copies from $101.96! new only from $101.97! \| first editions \| SVS
16 view cover	On the Essence of Language: The Metaphysics of Language and the Essencing of the Word; Concerning Herder's Treatise on the Origin of Language more books like this by Martin Heidegger, Wanda Torres Gregory (Translator), Yvonne Unna (Translator) add to wishlist This English translation of Vom Wesen der Sprache, volume 85 of Martin Heidegger's Gesamtausgabe, contains fascinating discussions of language that are important both for those interested in Heidegger's thought and for those who wish to think through the nature of language. The guiding theme of these reflections on language is found in Heidegger's ... see all copies from $24.00! new only from $32.95! \| first editions
17 view cover	A Theory of Syntax: Minimal Operations and Universal Grammar more books like this by Professor Norbert Hornstein add to wishlist Human language seems to have arisen roughly within the last 50-100,000 years. In evolutionary terms, this is the mere blink of an eye. If this is correct, then much of what we consider distinctive to language must in fact involve operations available in pre-linguistic cognitive domains. In this book Norbert Hornstein, one of the most influential ... see all copies from $33.69! new only from $33.69! \| SVS
18	Roots of Language more books like this by Derek Bickerton add to wishlist see all copies from $25.00!
19 view cover	The Origin of Speech more books like this by Peter F Macneilage add to wishlist This book explores the origin and evolution of speech. The human speech system is in a league of its own in the animal kingdom and its possession dwarfs most other evolutionary achievements. During every second of speech we unconsciously use about 225 distinct muscle actions. To investigate the evolutionary origins of this prodigious ability, ... see all copies from $41.62! new only from $41.62!
20 view cover	The Genesis of Grammar: A Reconstruction more books like this by Bernd Heine, Tania Kuteva add to wishlist "This book reconstructs what the earliest grammars might have been and shows how they could have led to the languages of modern humankind. "Like other biological phenomena, language cannot be fully understood without reference to its evolution, whether proven or hypothesized," wrote Talmy Givon in 2002. As the languages spoken 8,000 years ago were ... see all copies from $43.21! new only from $43.21! \| SVS
21 view cover	Evolution of Communicative Flexibility: Complexity, Creativity, and Adaptability in Human and Animal Communication more books like this by D Kimbrough Oller (Editor), Ulrike Griebel (Editor) add to wishlist The evolutionary roots of human communication are difficult to trace, but recent comparative research suggests that the first key step in that evolutionary history may have been the establishment of basic communicative flexibility - the ability to vocalize freely combined with the capability to coordinate vocalization with communicative intent. ... see all copies from $19.26! new only from $23.99! \| first editions \| SVS
22 view cover	Language Origins: Perspectives on Evolution more books like this by Maggie Tallerman (Editor) add to wishlist This book addresses central questions in the evolution of language: where it came from; how it relates to primate communication; how and why it evolved; how it came to be culturally transmitted; and how languages diversified. The chapters are written from the perspective of the latest work in linguistics, neuroscience, psychology, and computer ... see all copies from $45.69! new only from $45.69! \| SVS
23 view cover	Language, Feeling, and the Brain: The Evocative Vector more books like this by Dan Shanahan add to wishlist Linguistic theory since the Cognitive Revolution has followed one of the premises of that revolution by largely sidelining the issue of emotions and concentrating on those aspects of language that are more strictly cognitive. However, during the last ten years research in cognitive science, especially in neuropsychology, has begun to fill in the ... see all copies from $9.96! new only from $30.05! \| first editions
24 view cover	Toward an Evolutionary Biology of Language more books like this by Philip Lieberman add to wishlist In this forcefully argued book, the leading evolutionary theorist of language draws on evidence from evolutionary biology, genetics, physical anthropology, anatomy, and neuroscience, to provide a framework for studying the evolution of human language and cognition. Philip Lieberman argues forcibly that the widely influential theories of language's ... see all copies from $55.18! new only from $55.50! \| SVS
25 view cover	Approaches to the Evolution of Language: Social and Cognitive Bases more books like this by James R Hurford (Editor), Chris Knight (Editor), Michael Studdert-Kennedy (Editor) add to wishlist This is one of the first systematic attempts to bring language within the neo-Darwinian framework of modern evolutionary theory, without abandoning the vast gains in phonology and syntax achieved by formal linguistics over the past forty years. The contributors, linguists, psychologists, and paleoanthropologists, address such questions as: what is ... see all copies from $34.29! new only from $44.75! \| SVS

Page 1 of 3: 1 2 3 Next>

Browse authors

Browse subjects

Our Money-Back Guarantee

We guarantee every item's condition, as described on Alibris. If you are not satisfied that an item is as described, return your purchase for a refund.

	Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language by Steven Pinker see all from $1.99! new only from $8.02!
	Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World by Nicholas Ostler see all from $3.39! new only from $6.84!
	How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker see all from $1.99! new only from $5.21!
	The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue by Merritt Ruhlen see all from $1.99! new only from $3.57!
	Language Shock: Understanding the Culture of Conversation by Michael Agar see all from $7.00! new only from $11.98!
	Grammaticalization by Paul J Hopper see all from $8.43! new only from $26.83!