The Oxford Handbook of Approaches to Language Evolution

This handbook provides a detailed account of the many methodological considerations and approaches in the field of language evolution. Each chapter highlights a particular methodology and outlines a question or set of questions that can be addressed using that methodology, illustrated by a key example from the recent literature.

Limor Raviv leads the Language Evolution and Adaptation in Diverse Situations (LEADS) group at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, and is also a part-time lecturer in social interaction at the University of Glasgow. Her work simulates language evolution and diversification de novo and in silico by using a range of experimental and computational tools. She aims to uncover the major social, cognitive, and environmental pressures that shape human languages past and present, and to link core aspects of learning, cultural evolution, and ecology to explain the emergence and cross-linguistic variation of languages.
Cedric Boeckx is a research professor at ICREA, and the principal investigator of the Cognitive Biology of Language research group at the University of Barcelona, as well as a member of the University of Barcelona Institutes of Neuroscience and of Complex Systems. His current research focuses on the neurobiological foundations of the human language faculty, with special emphasis on evolutionary issues. His work is intended to facilitate integration among disciplines with the aim of achieving both better experimental testing of theoretical hypotheses and more solid interpretations of experimental findings.