The leading scholars in the rapidly growing field of language evolution give readable accounts of their theories on the origins of language and reflect on the most important current issues and debates. As well as providing a guide to their own published research in this area they highlight what they see as the most relevant research of others. The authors come from a wide range of disciplines involved in language evolution including linguistics, cognitive science, computational science, primatology, and archaeology.

• 1: Morten H. Christiansen and Simon Kirby: Language Evolution: The Hardest Problem in Science?


• 2: Steven Pinker: Language as an Adaptation to the Cognitive Niche


• 3: James Hurford: The Language Mosaic and its Evolution


• 4: Frederick J. Newmeyer: What can the Field of Linguistics Tell Us About the Origins of Language?


• 5: Derek Bickerton: Symbol and Structure: A Comprehensive Framework for Language Evolution


• 6: Michael Tomasello: On the Different Origins of Symbols and Grammar


• 7: Terrence W. Deacon: Universal Grammar and Semiotic Constraints


• 8: Iain Davidson: The Archaeological Evidence of Language Origins: States of the Art


• 9: Marc D. Hauser and W. Tecumseh Fitch: What are the Uniquely Human Components of the Language Faculty?


• 10: Michael A. Arbib: The Evolving Mirror System: A Neural Basis for Language Readiness


• 11: Michael C. Corballis: From Hand to Mouth: the Gestural Origins of Language


• 12: Robin I. M. Dunbar: The Origin and Subsequent Evolution of Language


• 13: Michael Studdert-Kennedy and Louis Goldstein: Launching Language: the Gestural Origin of Discrete Infinity


• 14: Philip Lieberman: Motor Control, Speech, and the Evolution of Human Language


• 15: Simon Kirby and Morten H. Christiansen: From Language Learning to Language Evolution


• 16: Ted Briscoe: Grammatical Assimilation


• 17: Natalia L. Komarova and Martin A. Nowak: Language, Learning, and Evolution

Morten H. Christiansen is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Cornell University. He is co-editor of Connectionist Psycholinguistics published by Ablex in 2001.
Simon Kirby is a British Academy Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh: his book, Function, Selection, and Innateness was published by OUP in 1999.