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Language Evolution Books
Showing 1-50 of 78
Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages (Hardcover)
by (shelved 3 times as language-evolution)
avg rating 3.91 — 7,538 ratings — published 2010
Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language (Hardcover)
by (shelved 2 times as language-evolution)
avg rating 3.72 — 4,891 ratings — published 2025
Why Only Us: Language and Evolution (Hardcover)
by (shelved 2 times as language-evolution)
avg rating 3.77 — 291 ratings — published
The First Idea: How Symbols, Language, and Intelligence Evolved from Our Primate Ancestors to Modern Humans (Paperback)
by (shelved 2 times as language-evolution)
avg rating 3.84 — 114 ratings — published 2004
The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body (Hardcover)
by (shelved 2 times as language-evolution)
avg rating 3.89 — 674 ratings — published 2005
The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention (Paperback)
by (shelved 2 times as language-evolution)
avg rating 4.22 — 4,117 ratings — published 2005
The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language – A Witty Linguistics Guide to How Tongues Mix, Mutate, and Evolve (Paperback)
by (shelved 2 times as language-evolution)
avg rating 4.00 — 3,284 ratings — published 2001
The Language Game: How Improvisation Created Language and Changed the World (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 4.02 — 473 ratings — published
Către originile limbajului: o istorie naturală a vorbirii (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 3.00 — 1 rating — published 2000
A Critical Introduction to Language Evolution (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 3.80 — 5 ratings — published
Cloud Atlas (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 4.01 — 271,809 ratings — published 2004
The Evolution of Communication (Bradford Books)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 3.56 — 18 ratings — published 1996
The Oxford Handbook of Approaches to Language Evolution (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 0.0 — 0 ratings — published
The Symbolic Species Evolved (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 3.25 — 4 ratings — published 2011
Sydney Brenner's 10-on-10: The Chronicles Of Evolution (Kindle Edition)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 4.67 — 3 ratings — published
Evolutionary Linguistics (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 4.25 — 4 ratings — published 2012
How Language Began: The Story of Humanity's Greatest Invention (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 3.44 — 1,027 ratings — published 2017
Language in Prehistory (Kindle Edition)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 3.74 — 27 ratings — published 2015
Genesis of Symbolic Thought (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 3.67 — 21 ratings — published 2012
Emergence of Protolanguage: Holophrasis Vs Compositionality (ebook)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 2.75 — 4 ratings — published 2010
The Dawn of Language: Axes, Lies, Midwifery and How We Came to Talk (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 3.98 — 603 ratings — published 2019
Origins of Language: A Slim Guide (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 3.67 — 69 ratings — published 2014
Dark Matter of the Mind: The Culturally Articulated Unconscious (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 3.92 — 48 ratings — published
Language: The Cultural Tool (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 3.63 — 430 ratings — published 2012
The Evolution of Human Language: Biolinguistic Perspectives (Approaches to the Evolution of Language)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 3.75 — 8 ratings — published 2010
From Signal to Symbol: The Evolution of Language (Life and Mind: Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psychology)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 3.92 — 12 ratings — published
The Iconic Roots of Language: Essays on the Non-Arbitrary Origins of Human Communication (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 3.00 — 1 rating — published 2008
Speaking Our Minds: Why human communication is different, and how language evolved to make it special (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 4.18 — 40 ratings — published 2014
The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 4.30 — 10 ratings — published 2012
Lucy to Language: The Benchmark Papers (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 4.33 — 3 ratings — published 2014
Origins of Human Communication (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 4.14 — 302 ratings — published 1999
The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 4.21 — 611 ratings — published 1997
The Origins of Meaning (Oxford Studies in the Evolution of Language)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 4.15 — 26 ratings — published 2007
Cognition and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Symbolic Storage (Monograph Series)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 3.67 — 6 ratings — published 1999
A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 4.39 — 9,042 ratings — published 2001
The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 4.16 — 56,658 ratings — published 2009
The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 4.23 — 12,724 ratings — published 2011
Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 4.22 — 1,469 ratings — published 1999
The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World (CBC Massey Lecture)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 4.22 — 4,287 ratings — published 2009
The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 4.09 — 28,862 ratings — published 1991
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 3.94 — 75,258 ratings — published 2004
Speak Not: Empire, Identity and the Politics of Language (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 3.91 — 119 ratings — published
Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 3.85 — 1,917 ratings — published 2022
Languages in the World: How History, Culture, and Politics Shape Language (Kindle Edition)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 4.00 — 14 ratings — published 2015
Language, Cognition, and Human Nature: Selected Articles (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 3.77 — 98 ratings — published 2013
Found in Translation: How Language Shapes Our Lives and Transforms the World (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 3.80 — 784 ratings — published 2012
How Dead Languages Work (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 4.00 — 219 ratings — published
The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves to Sand Worms, the Words Behind World-Building (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 4.13 — 2,062 ratings — published 2015
In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build a Perfect Language (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 4.10 — 3,002 ratings — published 2009
Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as language-evolution)
avg rating 4.06 — 3,120 ratings — published 2005
“We think of English as a fortress to be defended, but a better analogy is to think of English as a child. We love and nurture it into being, and once it gains gross motor skills, it starts going exactly where we don't want it to go: it heads right for the goddamned electrical sockets. We dress it in fancy clothes and tell it to behave, and it comes home with its underwear on its head and wearing someone else's socks. As English grows, it lives its own life, and this is right and healthy. Sometimes English does exactly what we think it should; sometimes it goes places we don't like and thrives there in spite of all our worrying. We can tell it to clean itself up and act more like Latin; we can throw tantrums and start learning French instead. But we will never really be the boss of it. And that's why it flourishes.”
― Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries
― Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries
“Perhaps we are just apes with brains being manipulated by memes in much the way we are manipulated by the cold virus. Instead of looking only at the prerequisite competences our ancestors needed to have in order for language to get under way, perhaps we should also consider unusual vulnerabilities that might make our ancestors the ideal hosts for infectious but nonvirulent habits (memes) that allowed us to live and stay mobile long enough for them to replicate through our populations.”
― From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds
― From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds
