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Origins of Language

No fossil preserves a sentence. No artefact records the first word. The origin of language is the central problem of human evolution and the one for which...

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No fossil preserves a sentence. No artefact records the first word. The origin of language is the central problem of human evolution and the one for which direct evidence is most absent. Key sections include: Origins of Language.; Opening The hardest question.; Chapter I Defining the thing.; Chapter II Chomsky's claim.; Chapter III UG and its critics.; Chapter IV Bickerton's hypothesis.; Chapter V Tomasello's account.; Chapter VI The speech gene.; Chapter VII The descended larynx.; Chapter VIII The bones we have..

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Slide outline
  1. 01Origins of Language.
  2. 02Opening The hardest question.
  3. 03Chapter I Defining the thing.
  4. 04Chapter II Chomsky's claim.
  5. 05Chapter III UG and its critics.
  6. 06Chapter IV Bickerton's hypothesis.
  7. 07Chapter V Tomasello's account.
  8. 08Chapter VI The speech gene.
  9. 09Chapter VII The descended larynx.
  10. 10Chapter VIII The bones we have.
  11. 11Chapter IX The Blombos signal.
  12. 12Chapter X Hands before voice.
  13. 13Chapter XI The musilanguage hypothesis.
  14. 14Chapter XII The pidgin-creole evidence.
  15. 15Chapter XIII The Nicaraguan miracle.
  16. 16Chapter XIV The window.
  17. 17Chapter XV The recursion question.
  18. 18Chapter XVI What apes can.
  19. 19Chapter XVII The unlikely cousins.
  20. 20Chapter XVIII Two systems.
  21. 21Chapter XIX Broca and Wernicke.
  22. 22Chapter XX The dispersal and language.
  23. 23Chapter XXI An honest disclaimer.
  24. 24Chapter XXII The instinct argument.
  25. 25Chapter XXIII Counting and language.
  26. 26Chapter XXIV Language and thought.
  27. 27Chapter XXV The grooming hypothesis.
  28. 28Chapter XXVI Twenty essentials.
  29. 29Chapter XXVII Watch & read.
  30. 30Chapter XXVIII The defensible summary.
  31. 31Chapter XXIX The frontier.
  32. 32The end of the deck.
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Canonical
https://shipslides.com/d/languages-origins-of-language
Category
Languages
Size
8.9 MB
Updated
2026-05-15
LLM text
https://shipslides.com/d/languages-origins-of-language/llms.txt
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