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Finding Our Tongues: Mothers, Infants, and the Origins of Language
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Finding Our Tongues: Mothers, Infants, and the Origins of Language Hardcover - 2009 - 1st Edition

by Dean Falk

Combining cutting-edge neuroscience with classic anthropology, Falk offers a potent challenge to conventional wisdom about the emergence of human language. 25 b&w illustrations.


From the publisher

Scientists have long theorized that abstract, symbolic thinking evolved to help humans negotiate such classically male activities as hunting, tool making, and warfare, and eventually developed into spoken language. In Finding Our Tongues, Dean Falk overturns this established idea, offering a daring new theory that springs from a simple observation: parents all over the world, in all cultures, talk to infants by using baby talk or "Motherese." Falk shows how Motherese developed as a way of reassuring babies when mothers had to put them down in order to do work. The melodic vocalizations of early Motherese not only provided the basis of language but also contributed to the growth of music and art. Combining cutting-edge neuroscience with classic anthropology, Falk offers a potent challenge to conventional wisdom about the emergence of human language.

Details

  • Title Finding Our Tongues: Mothers, Infants, and the Origins of Language
  • Author Dean Falk
  • Binding Hardcover
  • Edition number 1st
  • Edition 1
  • Pages 256
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Basic Books, New York
  • Date 2009-03-17
  • Illustrated Yes
  • Features Bibliography, Dust Cover, Illustrated, Index, Price on Product - Canadian, Table of Contents
  • ISBN 9780465002191 / 0465002196
  • Weight 1 lbs (0.45 kg)
  • Dimensions 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.2 in (23.11 x 16.26 x 3.05 cm)
  • Themes
    • Aspects (Academic): Science/Technology Aspects
  • Library of Congress subjects Evolution, Language and languages - Origin
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 2008044299
  • Dewey Decimal Code 401

Media reviews

Citations

  • Booklist, 03/15/2009, Page 33
  • Choice, 02/01/2010, Page 0
  • New York Review of Books, 10/22/2009, Page 44
  • Publishers Weekly, 01/19/2009, Page 50
  • Reference and Research Bk News, 02/01/2010, Page 246
  • Science Books & Films, 05/01/2009, Page 100

About the author

Dean Falk is Hale G. Smith Professor of Anthropology at Florida State University. She is the author of Braindance and Primate Diversity, and co-author of The Face in the Mirror. Her "putting the baby down" theory, published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Scientific American, New Scientist, National Geographic, and Newsweek. She lives in Tallahassee, Florida, and Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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Finding Our Tongues: Mothers, Infants & the Origins of Language
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Finding Our Tongues: Mothers, Infants & the Origins of Language

by Falk, Dean

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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
9780465002191 / 0465002196
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