Origin Of Language

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Roy Harris
A&C Black, 1 de jan. de 1996 - 332 páginas
Public debate about language in the English-speaking world during the nineteenth century turned on the issue of how language began. The notion that language was a divine gift to humanity, not shared by lower creatures, was supported by the Biblical accounts of Adam naming the animals and of the Tower of Babel. It was still accepted by leading religious authorities. But this notion was seriously brought into question by the publication of Darwin's theory of evolution. Those who rejected Darwinism ridiculed all attempts to conjure up language out of primitive calls, grunts, and ejaculations. No animals, it was pointed out, had yet achieved communication remotely resembling the use of words. On the other side were those who held that it was possible to account for the birth of language rationally as a function of the development of human communicational needs in society.

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INTRODUCTORY LECTURE extracts
1
THE THEORETICAL STAGE AND THE ORIGIN
7
THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE
8
ON LANGUAGE
42
ON THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE
81
MENTAL POWERS
143
This
180
PROFESSOR WHITNEY ON THE ORIGIN
277
NATURE AND ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE
291
THE SIMIAN TONGUE
314
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Roy Harris is Emeritus Professor of General Linguistics at the University of Oxford, UK.

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