Is human language an evolutionary adaptation? Is linguistics a natural science? These questions have bedeviled philosophers, philologists and linguists from Plato through Chomsky. Prof. Giv???n suggests that the answers fall naturally within an integrated study of living organisms.In this new work, Giv???n points out that language operates between aspects of both complex biological design and adaptive behavior. As in biology, the whole is an adaptive compromise to competing demands. Variation is the indispensable tool of ...
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Is human language an evolutionary adaptation? Is linguistics a natural science? These questions have bedeviled philosophers, philologists and linguists from Plato through Chomsky. Prof. Giv???n suggests that the answers fall naturally within an integrated study of living organisms.In this new work, Giv???n points out that language operates between aspects of both complex biological design and adaptive behavior. As in biology, the whole is an adaptive compromise to competing demands. Variation is the indispensable tool of learning, change and adaptation. The contrast between innateness and input-driven emergence is an interaction between genetically-coded and behaviorally-coded experience. In enlarging the cross-disciplinary domain, the book examines the parallels between language evolution and language diachrony. Sociality, cooperation and communication are shown to be rooted in a common evolutionary source, the kin-based hunting-and-gathering society of intimates. The book pays homage to the late Joseph Greenberg and his visionary integration of functional motivation, typological diversity and diachronic change.
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Add this copy of Bio-Linguistics: the Santa Barbara Lectures to cart. $39.00, good condition, Sold by Common Crow Books rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Pittsburgh, PA, UNITED STATES, published 2002 by John Benjamins Publishing Company.
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Seller's Description:
Very Good. Printed paper wraps, octavo, 383pp., not illustrated. Book has handsome wraps and tight binding, text has some erasable pencil underlining and marginalia to first seven pages, otherwise clean. No DJ.
Add this copy of Bio-Linguistics (Not in Series) to cart. $72.00, good condition, Sold by Burke's Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Eugene, OR, UNITED STATES, published 2002 by John Benjamins Publishing Company.
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Seller's Description:
Good. pp. 401. Donated by the author. Ex-library w/top page block stamped, sticker on lower spine, sticker inside back cover. Corner wear moderate or light. Light soiling to lower page block. Spine is faded to grey.
