How the Brain Evolved Language

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Oxford University Press, Feb 28, 2002 - Philosophy - 240 pages
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.

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Contents

Lought and Thanguage
3
Joness Theory of Evolution
21
The Communicating Cell
36
The Society of Brain
52
Adaptive Resonance
74
Speech and Hearing
90
Speech Perception
109
One Two Three
123
Romiet and Juleo
133
Null Movement
143
Truth and Consequences
161
What If Language Is Learned hy Brain Cells?
171
NOTES
195
REFERENCES
203
INDEX
219
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