The Evolution of Language: Towards Gestural Hypotheses, 208 s.

Abstract

Why is language unique? How did language come about? When did this happen? Those questions, although quite emblematic of the Western intellectual tradition since its ancient beginnings, so far have not found satisfying answers. Indeed, many still question the very possibility of addressing those basic problems of language origins with proper scientific rigour. However, an emerging consensus is that current research in the field of language evolution is in fact bearing fruit: at the very least, by making it possible to adjudicate in an informed way between those competing scenarios that are far more and far less probable. Ewolucja języka: w stronę hipotez gesturalnych (The Evolution of Language. Towards the Gestural Hypotheses) is the first monograph that presents this developing field of language evolution research to the Polish reader. The book begins with two introductory chapters. Chapter One takes the Reader on an intellectual history tour comprised of two principal parts – a reconstruction of traditional views on the origin of language found in religious and philosophical reflection, and an account of the beginnings of naturalistic investigation that came with the birth of science in Europe. Chapter Two offers a readable introduction to the basics of general evolutionary theory and evolutionary psychology. The field of language evolution itself comes to the fore in the middle chapters: Chapter Three presents the historical and theoretical background of this field, its methods and its research agenda; and the following chapter contains a discussion of preadaptations, or preconditions for language, that is the anatomical and socio-cognitive traits that made the rise of language possible. Of these, we single out the emergence of honest and cooperative nature of linguistic communication as the key evolutionary invention en route to modern language, and we devote Chapter Five to its extended analysis. Finally, the last chapter of the book keys in on a more specific issue – the gestural, or “gesture-first”, hypotheses of language origins – and at the same time it serves as an illustration of how interdisciplinary evidence is synthesised and used argumentatively in current language evolution research.