This new four-volume collection, part of Routledge's Critical Concepts in Linguistics series, assembles the most important scholarly writings concerning the biological evolution of language, particularly those incorporating a Darwinian view of evolution. Including excerpts from ancient sources such as the Bible, Plato, and Aristotle, along with classical sources like Condillac, Rousseau, and Herder, Language Evolution provides an overview of the intensive debate on language evolution following the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. It also outlines each of the major conceptions of...