The emergence of protolanguage : holophrasis vs compositionality / edited by Michael A. Arbib, Derek Bickerton.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

The Emergence of Protolanguage; Editorial page; Untitled; Title page; LCC data; Table of contents; Preface; Is a holistic protolanguage a plausible precursor to language?; Proto-discourse and the emergence of compositionality; Protolanguage in ontogeny and phylogeny; From metonymy to syntax in the communication of events; The "complex first" paradox; Holophrastic protolanguage; Protolanguage reconstructed; Growth points from the very beginning; The roots of linguistic organization in a new language; Holophrasis and the protolanguage spectrum; But how did protolanguage actually start?

Somewhere and somehow, in the 5 to 7 million years since the last common ancestors of humans and the great apes, our ancestors "got" language. The authors of this volume all agree that there was no single mutation or cultural innovation that took our ancestors directly from a limited system of a few vocalizations (primarily innate) and gestures (some learned) to language. They further agree to use the term "protolanguage" for the beginnings of an open system of symbolic communication that provided the bridge to the use of fully expressive languages, rich in both lexicon and grammar. But here c.

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