FROM HAND TO MOUTH: SOME CRITICAL STAGES IN THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE

@article{Steklis1976FROMHT,
  title={FROM HAND TO MOUTH: SOME CRITICAL STAGES IN THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE},
  author={Horst Dieter Steklis and Stevan Harnad},
  journal={Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences},
  year={1976},
  volume={280}
}
ABSTRACT: An evolutionary scenario for the evolution of language, beginning with handedness, gesture and pantomime, then propositions and speech, resulting in an all-purpose symbol system capable of expressing any proposition. 
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201 Citations
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201 Citations

The Gestural Origin of Language
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This book discusses language in the Wild, Gesture, Sign, and Speech, and the Ritualization of Language, as well as conceptual Spaces and Embodied Actions, and The Gesture-Language Interface.
FROM HAND TO MOUTH: SOME CRITICAL STAGES
In the evolution of linguistic behavior, as in the evolution of other traits, the actual sequence of events often proceeds by accretion and overlay upon prior developments such that a purely…
Origins and Distribution of Language
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The evolutionary history of language to the current distribution of language function in the brain is linked but there are simply too few points of contact between these two areas of limited knowledge for one to inform the other.
Back to the Oral Tradition Through Skywriting at the Speed of Thought
From the origin of human language 100,000 years ago until the invention of writing 5000 years ago the oral tradition had been the principal creator, conserver and communicator of human knowledge. Our…
From mouth to hand: Gesture, speech, and the evolution of right-handedness
  • M. Corballis
  • Biology, Psychology
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences
  • 2003
TLDR
It is argued that language evolved from manual gestures, gradually incorporating vocal elements, and may be traced through changes in the function of Broca's area, the code for both the production of manual reaching movements and the perception of the same movements performed by others.
Language lateralization to the dominant hemisphere: Tool use, gesture and language in hominid evolution
TLDR
Shared tool use in the authors' hominid ancestry is perhaps the most satisfactory explanation for human dextrality and left-hemisphere language lateralization, and the uniqueness of human language is still a matter of debate both with respect to other primates and their own evolutionary ancestors.
How language evolved from manual gestures
TLDR
A gradual switch from manual to facial and vocal expression may have occurred late in hominin evolution, with speech reaching its present level of autonomy only in the authors' own species, Homo sapiens.
Control of gestures and vocalizations in primates
A Model for Language Evolution
s, p. 39. 1976 The Ontogeny of Primate Intellectual Development and its Implications for Communicative Potential, Annals of the N, Y. Academy of Sciences 280, 173-211 Chouillet, J. 1972 Descartes et…
Visible movements of the orofacial area: evidence for gestural or multimodal theories of language evolution?
TLDR
It is suggested that the “gestural versus spoken” formulation is limiting and would be better expressed in terms of the relative input and interplay of the visual and vocal-auditory sensory modalities.
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