The Early Evolution of Language: A Species Pump Hypothesis

This book proposes a step-by-step process through which the early evolution of human language originated.Starting from an ape-like communication system, prehuman ancestors were "pumped" out of the rainforest by cyclic climate changes between 10 to 6 million years ago and subjected to harsh predatory conditions and the absence of safe havens.A phonetic "modal voice" evolved in response. Inarticulate sounds gradually became articulated syllables.The diversification of these syllables eventually led to symbolic references and, finally, to words.Bancel details each of these steps in which the origin of language and the origin of humans are shown to be concordant. Pierre Bancel was drawn early on to languages and focused on learning a dozen of them, including German, Russian, Hindi, and Kabyle, as well as Classical Latin and Greek.He has earned an MA in Language Sciences from the Université Auguste et Louis Lumière, Lyon, with an emphasis on comparative linguistics, instrumental phonetics,