The Development of Language Functional Perspectives on Species and Individuals

This book presents a unique range of interdisciplinary work on questions of language development and evolution. It makes visible the significant contribution which linguistics in the British, meaning-oriented tradition is making to debates about the origins of language - from the perspective of language evolution in the species as well as language development in the child. By seeing language in this way, and drawing on actual language corpora, the authors are able to address major questions of deep social significance, including: