Written by experts in a range of disciplines, this book explores the topic at many scales, from the function of neurons in learning, forming and transmitting language to the long-term evolution of language itself and the birth and death of ancient tongues. This volume contains a contemporary, integrated description of the processes of language. These range from fast scales (fractions of a second) to slow ones (over a million years). The contributors, all experts in their fields, address language in the brain, production of sentences and dialogues, language learning, transmission and evolutionary processes that happen over centuries or millenia, the relation between language and genes, the origins of language, self-organization, and language competition and death. The book as a whole will help to show how processes at different scales affect each other, thus presenting language as a dynamic, complex and profoundly human phenomenon.
Introduction.-Neurobiology: Language by, in, through and across the brain.- Dialogue.- Learning: Statistical mechanisms in language acquisition.- Evolution: Language use and the evolution of languages.- Transitions: The evolution of linguistic replicators.- Genes: Interactions with language on three levels.- Language in Nature: On the evolutionary roots of a cultural phenomenon.- Self-Organization: Complex dynamical systems in the evolution of speech.- Environment: Language ecology and language death.- Conclusions.
Philippe Binder is a Professor of Physics at the University of Hawaii at Hilo and a Faculty Fellow at the New England Complex Systems Institute. His areas of interest are chaos and complex systems, including multiscale analysis. He received his advanced training at Yale and Oxford. Like millions of people worldwide, he is trilingual.Kenny Smith is a Lecturer in the Language Evolution and Computation Research Unit, School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, with interests in the evolution of communication, human language and the human capacity for language. He uses a mix of modeling and experimental techniques to address these questions.
From the reviews:
"The Language Phenomenon: Human Communication From Milliseconds to Millennia ... aims to present 'topics in a manner accessible also to scientifically literate non-specialists wishing to gain insight into' areas with which they may not be familiar. ... the psychologist who wishes to broaden his or her perspective beyond psycholinguistics will find much food for thought in this volume. ... the authors have successfully reached their goal of introducing the 'scientifically literate' reader to 'the language phenomenon.'" (John G. Benjafield, PsycCRITIQUES, Vol. 58 (44), October, 2013)
"The author does a credible job on describing the biological, sociocultural, anthropological, psychological, and linguistic origins and manifestations of human language. ... The book will be of use to linguists, psychologists, biologists, and anthropologists working in this field." (Joseph J. Grenier, Amazon.com, September, 2013)
