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3 - How Language and Conversation Evolved

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 September 2022

L. David Ritchie
L. David Ritchie
Affiliation:
Portland State University
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Summary

Chapter 3 summarizes recent and current theories of how language and conversation may have evolved and the nature of language.Chapter 3 includes discussion of animal signaling and the role of complex social organization, collaboration, imitation, and play in language evolution.It summarizes and critiques the contributions of meme theory to the social evolution account of language development, and closes with a discussion of how language extends and contributes to individual and group homeostasis.

Keywords

contextcultural evolutionintentionalitylanguage evolutionmemeperspective-takingsemanticssignalsocial structuresyntax.
Type
Chapter
Information
Feeling, Thinking, and Talking
How the Embodied Brain Shapes Everyday Communication
 , pp. 46 - 80
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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