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Language requires investigation within a broad framework, which can
only be achieved if the elements studied belong to all realms of
verbal (and to some extent non-verbal) communication. Grammar is
merely the systematized aspect of language: by drawing on data from
oral communication in a number of languages - with its
phonological, pragmatic and gestural aspects - and taking into
account palaeontology, anthropology, psychology and evolutionary
biology, it is possible to shed new light on the phenomenon of
language, meant and designed for communication, and not merely
grammar. This book explores why language operates the way it does,
why it is acquired the way it is, how it evolved in the first
place, and why it is that some phenomena in language are universal
while others are not. The author also considers whether apparently
separate defining properties of our species are in fact narrowly
correlated aspects of one and the same biological reality, which
converges in language. Finally, the book explores the possibility
that language is both the reason and the effect of the intrinsic
responsibility that we feel for our fellow beings, akin to that
which in different contexts is called love for our neighbour, or
altruism.
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