The Gestural Origin of Language [Hardcover]

InThe Gestural Origin of Language, Sherman Wilcox and David Armstrong use evidence from and about sign languages to explore the origins of language as we know it today. According to their model, it is sign, not spoken languages, that is the original mode of human communication.

The authors demonstrate that modern language is derived from practical actions and gestures that were increasingly recognized as having the potential to represent, and hence to communicate. In other words, the fundamental ability that allows us to use language is our ability to use pictures or icons, rather than linguistic symbols. Evidence from the human fossil record supports the authors' claim by showing that we were anatomically able to produce gestures and signs before we were able to speak fluently. Although speech evolved later as a secondary linguistic communication device that eventually replaced sign language as the primary mode of communication, speech has never entirely replaced signs and gestures.

As the first comprehensive attempt to trace the origin of grammar to gesture, this volume will be an invaluable resource for students and professionals in psychology, linguistics, and philosophy.

The gestural theory of language origins was once considered mere speculation by philosophers. In the hands of Armstrong and Wilcox, however, this theory gains greater force and clarity. After reading their articulate and accessible book, I find the conclusion inescapable: language could not have begun otherwise. --H-Dirksen L. Bauman, Professor, Department of American Sign Language and Deaf Studies, Gallaudet University

Syntax is still the Holy Grail of language-origins research, and it's exciting to read a detailed and plausible explanation of its evolution as grounded in social processes of action, perception, and change over time-- and most definitely not in innatism! This book, in sum, is a beautifully realized synthesis of theory and data; it willó$