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    Talking Ape : How Language Evolved

    £13.49
    £14.99
    Price-Match is available in-store for recommended titles in CCCU module handbooks
    ISBN: 9780199214037
    Products specifications
    Attribute nameAttribute value
    AuthorBurling,R.
    Pub Date08/03/2007
    Binding7
    Pages304
    Publisher: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
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    Traces language back to its earliest origins among our distant ape-like forbears several million years ago. This book examines the qualities of mind and brain needed to support the operations of language; investigates the first links between signs, sounds, and meanings; explores the beginnings and prehistories of vocabulary and grammar; and more.

    In this mind-opening book, Robbins Burling presents the most convincing - and the most readable - account of the origins of language yet 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 earliest origins among our distant ape-like forbears several million years ago. He offers a new account of the route by which we acquired our defining characteristic and explores the changing nature of language as it developed through the course of our evolution. He considers what the earliest forms of communication are likely to have been, how they worked, and why they were deployed. He examines the qualities of mind and brain needed to support the operations of language and the advantages they offered for survival and reproduction. He investigates the beginnings and prehistories of vocabulary and grammar; and connects work in fields extending from linguistics, sign languages, and psychology to palaeontology, evolutionary biology, and archaeology.
    And he does all this in a style that is crystal-clear, constantly enlivened by wit and humour.