The genesis of grammar : a reconstruction
This book reconstructs what the earliest grammars might have been and shows how they could have led to the languages of modern humankind. It considers whether these languages derive from a single ancestral language; what the structure of language was when it first evolved; and how the properties associated with modern human languages first arose.
xvi, 418 p. ; 23 cm.
9780199227778, 0199227772
849464326
1. Introduction ; 2. An Outline of Grammatical Evolution ; 3. Some Cognitive Abilities of Animals ; 4. On Pidgins and Other Restricted Linguistic Systems ; 5. Clause Subordination ; 6. On The Rise of Recursion ; 7. Early Language ; References ; Subject Index