Archaeology and the evolutionary neuroscience of language

Interaction Studies. Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systemsinteraction Studies / Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systemsinteraction Studies 19 (1-2):256-271 (2018)
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Abstract

Comparative approaches to language evolution are essential but cannot by themselves resolve the timing and context of evolutionary events since the last common ancestor with chimpanzees. Archaeology can help to fill this gap, but only if properly integrated with evolutionary theory and the ethnographic, ethological, and experimental analogies required to reconstruct the broader social, behavioral, and neurocognitive implications of ancient artifacts. The current contribution elaborates a technological pedagogy hypothesis of language origins by developing the concept of an evolving human technological niche and applying it to investigate two key transitions posited by Arbib’s Mirror System Hypothesis: from complex action recognition and imitation to proto-language, and from proto-language to language.

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References found in this work

The visual brain in action (precis).David Milner - 1998 - PSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 4.
Constructions: a new theoretical approach to language.Adele E. Goldberg - 2003 - Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7 (5):219-224.
Pantomime and imitation in great apes.Anne E. Russon - 2018 - Interaction Studies. Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systemsinteraction Studies / Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systemsinteraction Studies 19 (1-2):200-215.

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