How Language Began
Gesture and Speech in Human Evolution

The first book to explain how speech and gesture evolved together into a system that all humans possess.

David McNeill (Author)

9781107605497, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 30 August 2012

275 pages, 167 b/w illus. 11 tables
24.5 x 17.4 x 1.3 cm, 0.55 kg

'… grounded in the expertise of more than three decades of studying gestures with speech, this book will significantly change the scholarly debates on language evolution.' Cornelia Müller, Professor of Applied Linguistics, European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder)

Human language is not the same as human speech. We use gestures and signs to communicate alongside, or instead of, speaking. Yet gestures and speech are processed in the same areas of the human brain, and the study of how both have evolved is central to research on the origins of human communication. Written by one of the pioneers of the field, this is the first book to explain how speech and gesture evolved together into a system that all humans possess. Nearly all theorizing about the origins of language either ignores gesture, views it as an add-on or supposes that language began in gesture and was later replaced by speech. David McNeill challenges the popular 'gesture-first' theory that language first emerged in a gesture-only form and proposes a groundbreaking theory of the evolution of language which explains how speech and gesture became unified.

1. Introduction - gesture and the origin of language
2. What evolved (in part) - the Growth Point
3. How it evolved (in part) - Mead's Loop
4. Effects of Mead's Loop
5. Ontogenesis in evolution - evolution in ontogenesis
6. Alternatives, their limits, and the science base of the Growth Point.

Subject Areas: Evolution [PSAJ], Cognition & cognitive psychology [JMR], Sign languages, Braille & other linguistic communication [CFZ], Historical & comparative linguistics [CFF], Psycholinguistics [CFD]