Givón T. Bio-linguistics: The Santa Barbara Lectures

John Benjamins, 2002. — 402 p.This is a book about the biological constraints of language, and how they operate to produce language universals. It also deals with an explanation of how those language universals develop along time, producing different characteristics within different languages. Language is therefore considered as a product of human evolution, which influenced language processing rates through neuro-cognitive processes that operate inside the human mind. The book also deals with some complementary issues, such as the grammar of narrative fiction, the relationship between language and social cooperation, and the different academic approaches (i.e., philosophical, anthropological, sociological) to language.Language as a biological adaptation
The bounds of generativity and the adaptive basis of variation
The demise of competence
Human language as an evolutionary product
An evolutionary account of language processing rates
The diachronic foundations of language universals
The neuro-cognitive interpretation of ‘context’: Anticipating other minds
The grammar of the narrator’s perspective in narrative fiction
The society of intimates
On the ontology of academic negativity
Epilogue: Joseph Greenberg as a theorist