The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution (Oxford Handbooks)

In The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution, sixty leading scholars present critical accounts of every aspect of the field. Its five parts are devoted to insights from comparative animal behavior; the biology of language evolution (anatomy, genetics, and neurology); the prehistory of language (when and why did language evolve?); the development of a linguistic species; and language creation, transmission, and change.

Research on language evolution has burgeoned over the last three decades. Interdisciplinary activity has produced fundamental advances in the understanding of language evolution and in human and primate evolution more generally. The book presents a wide-ranging summation of work in all the disciplines involved. It highlights the links in different lines of research, shows what has been achieved to date, and considers the most promising directions for future work.

The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution will be valued by everyone interested in one of the most productive and fascinating fields in natural and cognitive science.

Maggie Tallerman is Professor of Linguistics at Newcastle University. She has spent her professional life in North East England, having previously taught for 21 years at Durham University. Her research interests center on the origins and evolution of syntax and morphology; modern Brythonic Celtic syntax and morphology; and language typology. Her publications include Understanding Syntax (Hodder/OUPUSA, 1998; 3rd edn. 2011); with Robert D. Borsley and David Willis, The Syntax of Welsh (CUP, 2007); and, as editor, Language Origins: Perspectives on Evolution (OUP, 2005). She is also the editor of the series Palgrave Modern Linguistics.

Kathleen R. Gibson is Professor Emerita, Neurobiology and Anatomy, University of Texas Houston. Her co-edited books include, with Sue T. Parker, Language' and Intelligence in Monkeys and Apes (CUP 1990); with Tim Ingold, Tools, Language, and Cognition in Human Evolution (CUP 1993); with Paul Mellars, Modelling the Early Human Mind (McDonald Archaeological Institute 1996); and, with Dean Falk, Evolutionary Anatomy of the Human Neocortex (CUP 2001). She is the co-editor with James R. Hurford of the series, Oxford Studies in the Evolution of Language.

1. Introduction: The evolution of language, Maggie Tallerman and Kathleen R. Gibson

Part 1: Insights From Comparative Animal Behaviour

2. Introduction to Part 1: Insights from comparative animal behaviour, Kathleen R. Gibson and Maggie Tallerman

3. Language or Protolanguage? A review of the ape language literature, Kathleen R. Gibson

4. Primate Social Cognition as a Precursor to Language, Robert M. Seyfarth and Dorothy L. Cheney

5. Cooperative Breeding and the Evolution of Vocal Flexibility, Klaus Zuberbuhler

6. Gesture as the Most Flexible Modality of Primate Communication, Frans B. M. de Waal and Amy S. Pollick

7. Have we Underestimated Great Ape Vocal Capacities?, Katie Slocombe

8. Bird Song and Language, Peter Slater

9. Vocal Communication and Cognition in Cetaceans, Vincent M. Janik

10. Evolution of Communication and