The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form

by Chris Knight, Michael Studdert-Kennedy (Editor), James R. Hurford (Editor)

The Evolutionary Emergence of Language covers the origins and early evolution of language. Its main purpose is to synthesize current thinking on this topic, particularly from a standpoint in theoretical linguistics. It is suitable for students of human evolution, evolutionary psychology, linguistic anthropology and general linguistics. It is the outcome of a major international conference on the evolution of language and includes contributions from many of the best known figures in this field. Very few truly interdisciplinary volumes on this topic have previously been published.

Genres: Language, Linguistics

440 pages, Hardcover

First published November 29, 1996

About the author

Professor Knight gained his PhD in 1987 for a thesis on Claude Lévi-Strauss's four-volume 'Mythologiques'. He became a lecturer in anthropology at the University of East London in 1989. Knight is a founding member of the "Radical Anthropology Group". He is currently a senior research fellow at University College London.

Since 1966, Knight has been exploring the idea that language and symbolic culture emerged in the human species through a process of Darwinian evolution culminating at a certain point in revolutionary change. Becoming human was, according to this theory, a classic instance of a dialectical process, i.e. one in which quantitative change culminates eventually in a qualitative leap.

In 1996, Knight co-founded the EVOLANG series of international conferences on the origins of language, since when he has become a prominent figure in debates on the origins of human symbolic culture and especially the origin of language.