Introduction The Evolution of Cooperative Communication
'Selfish gene' Darwinism differs from earlier versions of evolutionary theory in its focus on one key question Why cooperate The faculty of speech which distinguishes Homo sapiens from other species is an aspect of human social competence. By inference, it evolved in the context of uniquely human strategies of social cooperation. In these chapters, therefore, Darwinism in its modern, socially aware form provides our theoretical point of departure. Where, previously, attention has focused on...
Comprehension Production and Conventionalisation in the Origins of Language
This chapter explores the implications of two observations that should be reasonably obvious, or at least familiar, but when they are considered together, they lead to an unfamiliar but interesting way of thinking about the early stages of language. The first of the two observations is simply that all of us, humans and animals alike, are always able to understand more than we can say. Comprehension runs consistently ahead of production. The second observation extends the first both humans and...