Bøger af Derek Bickerton

How did humans acquire cognitive capacities far more powerful than any hunting-and-gathering primate needed to survive? Alfred Russel Wallace, co-founder with Darwin of evolutionary theory, set humans outside normal evolution. Darwin thought use of language might have shaped our sophisticated brains, but this remained an intriguing guess--until now. Combining state-of-the-art research with forty years of writing and thinking about language origins, Derek Bickerton convincingly resolves a crucial problem that biology and the cognitive sciences have systematically avoided. Before language or advanced cognition could be born, humans had to escape the prison of the here and now in which animal thinking and communication were both trapped. Then the brain's self-organization, triggered by words, assembled mechanisms that could link not only words but the concepts those words symbolized--a process that had to be under conscious control. Those mechanisms could be used equally for thinking and for talking, but the skeletal structures they produced were suboptimal for the hearer and had to be elaborated. Starting from humankind's remotest past, More than Nature Needs transcends nativist thesis and empiricist antithesis by presenting a revolutionary synthesis that shows specifically and in a principled way how and why the synthesis came about.

Interdisciplinary perspectives on the evolutionary and biological roots of syntax, describing current research on syntax in fields ranging from linguistics to neurology.

Bickerton Or The Emigrants Daughter: A Tale Of Irish-American Life (1862) is a novel written by Bickerton. The book tells the story of an Irish-American family living in the mid-19th century. The protagonist of the story is the daughter of an Irish immigrant who came to America to start a new life.The novel is set in the backdrop of the American Civil War and explores the themes of love, family, and loyalty. The story follows the life of the young girl as she navigates her way through the challenges of growing up in a new country, and the struggles of her family as they try to make a life for themselves in America.The book is written in a simple and straightforward style, making it accessible to readers of all ages. It is a heartwarming tale of hope and perseverance, and a tribute to the strength and resilience of the Irish-American community.Bickerton Or The Emigrants Daughter: A Tale Of Irish-American Life (1862) is a timeless classic that continues to inspire readers today. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of Irish-Americans and their contributions to American society.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

In the first volume of the Commandment trilogy, we left Zachary, the failed hermit, as he began to expiate his sins in the interior desert of fourth-century Egypt. This second volume links his story with that of Leila, the peasant girl whom the bandit Darion saved from rape at the hands of his gang. While Zachary goes through a series of bizarre experiences in a lost desert oasis, Leila travels to the White Monastery, ruled by the ruthless Shenoute, where instead of the holy calm she expected she finds only lesbian practices and spiteful intrigue. When Zachary falls mortally ill he is rescued by an unexpected savior, and recovers to find himself a peasant in the Nile valley. There he meets Leila, who has been expelled from the White Monastery, and slowly, cautiously, almost unwillingly these two "Casualties of the Life", as they call themselves, begin to fall in love.Once again, with exemplary research and evocative writing, Derek Bickerton brings to life an exotic but little-known period of history, and sheds a unique light on the early development of Christianity-both its good and its bad sides.

These poems are, as the title suggests, all about either death or love, except for those that are about both death and love. Written over several decades, they record shifting attitudes to both, as well as a deepening concern with what will happen when death parts those who love. Written in an informal colloquial style, they express deep and complex emotions as well as awareness of the downhill trajectory of our present civilization mirroring that of the lovers' lives, and a restless curiosity that extends to every aspect of life. These poems are truly original and unique--there is nothing else quite like them in literature today.

In this third and final part of The Commandment Trilogy, two "casualties of life," Zachary, the failed hermit, and Leila, the ostracized nun, travel from the the Nile valley on a final life journey, this time together. Set in exotic but little-known fourth-century A.D. Egypt, their journey sheds a unique light on the early development of Christianity -- both its good and its bad sides.

How language evolved has been called "the hardest problem in science." In Adam's Tongue, Derek Bickerton-long a leading authority in this field-shows how and why previous attempts to solve that problem have fallen short. Taking cues from topics as diverse as the foraging strategies of ants, the distribution of large prehistoric herbivores, and the construction of ecological niches, Bickerton produces a dazzling new alternative to the conventional wisdom.Language is unique to humans, but it isn't the only thing that sets us apart from other species-our cognitive powers are qualitatively different. So could there be two separate discontinuities between humans and the rest of nature? No, says Bickerton; he shows how the mere possession of symbolic units-words-automatically opened a new and different cognitive universe, one that yielded novel innovations ranging from barbed arrowheads to the Apollo spacecraft.Written in Bickerton's lucid and irreverent style, this book is the first to thoroughly integrate the story of how language evolved with the story of how humans evolved. Sure to be controversial, it will make indispensable reading both for experts in the field and for every reader who has ever wondered how a species as remarkable as ours could have come into existence.'

The stranger than fiction true story of Boysie Singh - Robber, Arsonist, Pirate, Mass-Murderer, Vice and Gambling King of Trinidad.

Tells the story of what language is, how it works, and how it passes from generation to generation, even where historical accidents have made normal transmission almost impossible.

Language and Species presents the most detailed and well-documented scenario to date of the origins of language.

In this volume the author describes and systematically accounts for language variation in a Creole-speaking community and assesses the implications the study has on generally accepted notions of the nature of language. The volume also offers strong support for theories of Creole origins of 'Black English' in the United States.