A01=Guillermo Lorenzo
A01=Sergio Balari
Author_Guillermo Lorenzo
Author_Sergio Balari
Category=CFA
Category=PS
eq_bestseller
eq_dictionaries-language-reference
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
Product details
- ISBN 9780199665464
- Weight: 534g
- Dimensions: 162 x 239mm
- Publication Date: 13 Dec 2012
- Publisher: Oxford University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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This book confronts the hotly debated claim that language is a species specific trait of humans. It also considers the notion that disentangling the evolutionary history of language is one of science's hardest problems. Building on the recent conceptual breakthroughs of the EvoDevo paradigm, Balari and Lorenzo argue that language is not so exceptional after all. It is, rather, just the human version of a fairly common and conservative organic system which they call the Central Computational Complex. The authors also propose that interspecies variation of this organ is restricted to (i) accessible memory resources, and (ii) patterns of external connectivity, both being the result of perturbations on the system underlying its development. The book, written accessibly for both biologists and linguists, offers a fresh perspective on language as a naturally evolved phenomenon.
Sergio Balari is a Professor of Linguistics at Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona and Guillermo Lorenzo is Professor of Linguistics at Universidad de Oviedo. They are members of an interuniversity team currently working on the developmental basis and evolutionary origins of language, with funds provided by the Spanish Government and FEDER. Sergio Balari is also a member of the Centre de Linguistica Teorica (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona). They have coauthored several articles in leading journals such as Biolinguistics, Biological Theory and International Journal of Evolutionary Biology.
