Gloria Origgi
2The origins of human verbal communication
Abstract: This chapter reconstructs that debate around the origins of language focusing in particular on the evolution of verbal communication. The main theories on evolution of language are succinctly presented. The origin of language remain thus a partial mystery: a lucky combination of the evolution of a super-complex modular cognition and of biological characteristics, such as the vocal tract, the larynx and the auditory system that optimized mutual comprehension in our ancestors. The chapter present the central tenet of the debate around Chomsky, Hauser and Fitch’s seminal paper on the evolution of language, that is, to establish whether the key-feature of a language faculty is the ...
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