Includes Bibliography (640-721) and Index

1. Insights from Comparative Animal Behaviour
2. The Biology of Language Evolution: Anatomy, Genetics, and Neurology
3. The Prehistory of Language: When and Why did Language Evolve?
4. Launching Language: The Development of a Linguistic Species
5. Language Change, Creation, and Transmission in modern humans
6.

The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution presents critical accounts of every aspect of the field. The book’s five parts are devoted to insights from comparative animal behavior; the biology of language evolution (anatomy, genetics, and neurology); the prehistory of language (when and why did language evolve? the development of a linguistic species; and language creation, transmission, and change. Research on language evolution has burgeoned over the last three decades. Interdisciplinary activity has produced fundamental advances in the understanding of language evolution and in human and primate evolution more generally. This book presents a wide-ranging summation of work in all the disciplines involved. It highlights the links in different lines of research, shows what has been achieved to date, and considers the most promising directions for future work.