Becoming Loquens

Once declared an unworthy pursuit for learned linguists, the study of language origins has recently become a matter of intensive respectable research. The change is understandable, because, while the nineteenth-century imaginative linguists could only speculate, today’s scientists can soberly investigate and present the hard data that could serve to outline the gradual evolution that led to the emergence and development of oral communication. Tracing that process or, rather, contributing to that effort, is the objective of this collection of articles and the collective endeavor of their authors, who from their own specific vantage points – primatology, anthropology, anatomy, cognition, neurology, linguistics, and sociology – are presenting data and analyses that will help the reader to gain better insight and clearer understanding of how humans have developed that fascinating tool of ours – language.