*HUMANA.MENTE Journal of Philosophical Studies*
www.humanamente.eu
Call for Papers Issue 27, October 2014
*Origin And Evolution Of Language*
*Editors*: Francesco Ferretti (University of Rome "Roma Tre"), Ines
Adornetti (University of Rome "Roma Tre" & University of L'Aquila")
The origin of language is a fascinating subject that has since always been
generating great interest as well as important controversies. The interest
depends on the core idea that language constitutes the element that, more
than any other, makes us humans. The controversies depend on the
methodological difficulties related to investigating this topic. Because of
these difficulties, the Linguistics Society of Paris in 1866 banned any
kind of debate among its members about the topic to avoid the disputes
originating from fragile speculations. Over the time the situation has
considerably changed, and the origin of language is no longer a taboo
today. The emergence of Darwinian evolutionary theory has allowed to
address this topic scientifically and systematically; and, in the last
forty years, a growing number of scholars from many backgrounds has dealt
with the problem and highlighted the different aspects involved in the
genesis and evolution of human linguistic capacities.
This special issue aims to address the question concerning the relationship
between language origins and human nature. A large part of contemporary
theoretical investigation attributes the "uniqueness" that characterizes
our species to the fact that humans are talking animals. How true is this
interpretation? Can we really assert that humans are uniquely characterized
by their verbal skills? Do humans have a special status in nature because
of language? The analysis of language in evolutionary terms is a powerful
tool to answer these questions: considering our verbal skills in the
framework of the evolutionary theory is indeed a way to understand how it
is possible to investigate human beings in a naturalistic perspective. In
other words, the theme of language origins gives us the opportunity to test
Darwin's idea of human beings as animals among other animals.
The issue aims to reflect the inherently interdisciplinary nature of
research into the origin and the evolution of language. We invite papers
from a wide range of subjects, including:
philosophy of language;
philosophy of biology;
cognitive science;
general evolutionary theory;
evolutionary psychology;
comparative psychology;
paleoanthropology;
gesture studies;
neuroscience of language;
primatology;
animal cognition;
animal communication.
*Invited contributors:*
Michael C. Corballis (University of Auckland)
Alessandra Falzone (University of Messina)
Peter Gärdenfors (Lund University)
Stefano Gensini (University of Rome "La Sapienza")
James R. Hurford (University of Edinburgh)
Adrien Meguerditchian (University of Provence)
Antonino Pennisi (University of Messina)
Ian Tattersall (American Museum of Natural History)
Natalie T. Uomini (University of Liverpool)
Jordan Zlatev (Lund University)
*Submissions should adhere to the following guidelines:*
Articles should be submitted in blind review format (in Microsoft Word).
Please omit any self-identifying information within the abstract and body
of the paper.
Furthermore, we invite to submit reviews of recent books (published after
2010), and commentaries of articles and books (also published before 2010)
that could be particularly interesting for the topics analyzed in this
issue.
*Languages*: English
*Max length*:
Articles: 40.000 characters (including spaces, references and an abstract
of no more than 150 words).
Commentaries: 25.000 characters (including spaces and references).
Reviews: 20.000 characters (including spaces and references).
*Submissions should be sent via email to*:
francesco.ferretti@uniroma3.it, and
ines.adornetti@gmail.com
*Important dates*
Deadline for submissions: March 31th, 2014
Notification of acceptance: June 2014
www.humanamente.eu
Received on Mon Mar 3 07:39:39 2014
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