Is human language an evolutionary adaptation? Is linguistics a natural science? These questions have bedeviled philosophers, philologists and linguists from Plato through Chomsky. Prof. Givón suggests that the answers fall naturally within an integrated study of living organisms. In this new work, Givón points out that language operates between aspects of both complex biological design and adaptive behavior. As in biology, the whole is an adaptive compromise to competing demands. Variation is the indispensable tool of learning, change and adaptation. The contrast between innateness and input-driven emergence is an interaction between genetically-coded and behaviorally-coded experience. In enlarging the cross-disciplinary domain, the book examines the parallels between language evolution and language diachrony. Sociality, cooperation and communication are shown to be rooted in a common evolutionary source, the kin-based hunting-and-gathering society of intimates. The book pays homage to the late Joseph Greenberg and his visionary integration of functional motivation, typological diversity and diachronic change.

Table of Contents

Preface xv•xviii Language as a bio-adaptation 1•29 The bounds of generativity and the adaptive basis of variation 31•69 The demise of competence 71•122 Human language as an evolutionary product 123•162 An evolutionary account of language processing rates 163•184 The diachronic foundations of language universals 205•224 The neuro-cognitive interpretation of ‘context’ 225•261 The grammar of perspective in narrative fiction 263•301 The society of intimates 303•333 On the ontology of academic negativity 335•345 Epilogue: Joseph Greenberg as a theorist 347•355 Bibliography 357•377