Birdsong, Speech, and Language

Birdsong, Speech, and Language

Exploring the Evolution of Mind and Brain

Edited by Johan J. Bolhuis and Martin Everaert

Foreword by Robert C. Berwick and Noam Chomsky
Prominent scholars consider the cognitive and neural similarities between birdsong and human speech and language.
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Summary

Prominent scholars consider the cognitive and neural similarities between birdsong and human speech and language.

Scholars have long been captivated by the parallels between birdsong and human speech and language. In this book, leading scholars draw on the latest research to explore what birdsong can tell us about the biology of human speech and language and the consequences for evolutionary biology. After outlining the basic issues involved in the study of both language and evolution, the contributors compare birdsong and language in terms of acquisition, recursion, and core structural properties, and then examine the neurobiology of song and speech, genomic factors, and the emergence and evolution of language.

Contributors Hermann Ackermann, Gabriël J.L. Beckers, Robert C. Berwick, Johan J. Bolhuis, Noam Chomsky, Frank Eisner, Martin Everaert, Michale S. Fee, Olga Fehér, Simon E. Fisher, W. Tecumseh Fitch, Jonathan B. Fritz, Sharon M.H. Gobes, Riny Huijbregts, Eric Jarvis, Robert Lachlan, Ann Law, Michael A. Long, Gary F. Marcus, Carolyn McGettigan, Daniel Mietchen, Richard Mooney, Sanne Moorman, Kazuo Okanoya, Christophe Pallier, Irene M. Pepperberg, Jonathan F. Prather, Franck Ramus, Eric Reuland, Constance Scharff, Sophie K. Scott, Neil Smith, Ofer Tchernichovski, Carel ten Cate, Christopher K. Thompson, Frank Wijnen, Moira Yip, Wolfram Ziegler, Willem Zuidema

Hardcover

$60.00 X | £50.00 ISBN: 9780262018609 560 pp. | 7 in x 9 in 93 b&w illus.

Paperback

$35.00 X | £28.00 ISBN: 9780262528849 560 pp. | 7 in x 9 in 93 b&w illus.

Editors

Johan J. Bolhuis

Johan J. Bolhuis is Professor of Cognitive Neurobiology at Utrecht University.

Martin Everaert

Martin Everaert is Professor of Linguistics at Utrecht University.

Contributors

Robert C. Berwick and Noam Chomsky.

Reviews

  • Evaluating the book as a whole, it is simply a splendid piece of scholarship.

    Darcy Sperlich

    The Linguist List

Endorsements

  • This book is devoted to a topic—birdsong and human speech—that is of interest to evolutionary biologists and to students of human language, as well as to the general reader. Both humans and birds produce and react to acoustic signals, but they do so in ways that have some similarities and many obvious differences. The authors of the different chapters are the world's leading experts on the topics they discuss, and their chapters contribute information, of which much is totally new and of obvious importance.

    Morris Halle

    Institute Professor and Professor of Linguistics, Emeritus, MIT