THE TALKING APE --- HOW LANGUAGE EVOLVED by Robbins Burling, Oxford University Press, 2005

    PREFACE (pvii-viii)

    ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (pix)

      1) In the beginning (p1-22)

        Few topics about which scholars have puzzled can be quite so intriguing and so tantalizing, but at the same time so frustrating, as the evolution of the human capacity for language. Nothing so decisively sets us apart from our primate cousins as our constant chatter. It is no exaggeration to credit language for the very humanity that distinguishes us from the beasts from which we sprang. If we are even a tiny bit curious about our own origins, we have to be curious about the origins of language.

        This is why it so frustrating to have no direct evidence for the language of our early ancestors...The lack of direct evidence for such a crucial part of our heritage has left the topic open to speculation, some of it reasonable, some that might be called "imaginative," and some downright crazy, and this has brought the subject a certain disrepute, because of an historic taboo into exploring the origin of human language by early British linguists.

        Any attempt to figure out how language evolved does have two reasonably solid anchor points. To get an idea about where it all began, we can observe the behavior of our closest primate cousins, the chimpanzees and bonobos. The latter, once rather misleadingly called "pygmy chimpanzees", are now recognized as a separate species. For the ending point, we can look at our own languages. We want to know how animals with something similar to the capacities of chimps or bonobos, but only from "something similar" to them. These two closely related, but strangely different species split from each other about three million years ago. Their common ancestor, in turn, split from the human line two or three million years before that.

        Since the time of that earlier separation, chimps and bonobos have had just as long to evolve as we have, so we certainly did not evolve from the apes we know today, and the differences between chimpanzees and bonobos show us that they have also evolved...The apes, especially the chimpanzees and bonobos, give us the best idea we have about the behavior of our common ancestor. We can use the behavior of these apes, cautiously, as a plausible starting point.

        Our other anchor is modern human language. We can listen to people talk and try to figure out how language works...We do know a good deal about the sounds, words, and grammar of our languages, so the question that has to be asked by anyone interested in the origin of language is:

          "How did we get from an ordinary primate that could not talk to the strange human primate that can't shut up?

        The central argument of this book is that comprehension, rather than production, was the driving force for the evolution of the human ability to use language...Speaking is only one half of the communicative process. Language needs a listener as much as it needs a speaker, and whenever we pay close attention to understanding, we find that everyone --- children, adults, and even animals --- can understand more than they can say.

        Comprehension always surpasses the ability to produce. Sometimes, we can even interpret another's actions when he would much rather we understand nothing at all.

        Language is more than simply a means of exchanging information. It is also a medium for art, humor, poetry, storytelling, and oratory. It gave our ancestors, as it gives us, a means to dispay themselves. Language may have helped our ancestors to cooperate, but at least as important, it gave them new ways to compete. With language we have acquired a powerful new "tool" with which we can try to outmaneuver and outmanipulate one another.

        If you want to engage in social climbing, you had better hone your language skills. This book explains the emergence of language as one aspect of the evolution of our human minds, and also as a means by which our minds can build increasingly complex social relationships.

        This means that the better we understand the evolution of our minds and our social relationships, the better we will understand the emergence of language.

      2) Smiles, winks, and words (p23-47)

      3) Truths and lies (p48-64)

      4) The mind and language (p65-91)

      5) Signs and symbols (p92-104)

      6) Icons gained and icons lost (p105-121)

      7) From a few sounds to many words (p122-144)

      8) Syntax --- wired and learned (p145-163)

      9) Step-by-step to grammar (p164-180)

      10) Power, gossip, and seduction (p181-209)

      11) What has language done to us? (p210-233)

    NOTES (p234-245)

    GLOSSARY (p246-250)

    BIBLIOGRAPHY (p251-268)

    INDEX (p269-286)

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