LINGUIST List 13.3265

Wed Dec 11 2002

Books: Linguistic Theories: Loritz

Editor for this issue: Marisa Ferrara <marisalinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. bartonm, How the Brain Evolved Language: Loritz

			
Title: How the Brain Evolved Language

Publication Year: 2002
Publisher: Oxford University Press 
 http://www.oup-usa.org/		 
			
Book URL: http://www.oup-usa.org/isbn/019511874X.html

Author: Donald Loritz, Georgetown University 

Hardback: ISBN: 019511874X, Pages: 240 pp, Price: $ 45.00
Paperback: ISBN: 0195151240, Pages: 240 pp, Price: $ 19.95
			
Abstract:

How can an infinite number of sentences be generated from one human
mind? How did language evolve in apes? In this book Donald Loritz
addresses these and other fundamental and vexing questions about
language, cognition, and the human brain. He starts by tracing how
evolution and natural adaptation selected certain features of the
brain to perform communication functions, then shows how those
features developed into designs for human language. The result -- what
Loritz calls an adaptive grammar -- gives a unified explanation of
language in the brain and contradicts directly (and controversially)
the theory of innateness proposed by, among others, Chomsky and
Pinker.

Lingfield(s): Linguistic Theories
			 
Written In: English (Language Code: ENG)