|
Essay On The Origin Of Languages
''Essay on the Origin of Languages'' (french: Essai sur l'origine des langues) is an essay by Jean-Jacques Rousseau published posthumously in 1781. Rousseau had meant to publish the essay in a short volume which was also to include essays ''On Theatrical Imitation'' and ''The Levite of Ephraim.'' In the preface to this would-be volume, Rousseau wrote that the ''Essay'' was originally meant to be included in the ''Discourse on Inequality'', but was omitted because it "was too long and out of place".Victor Gourevitch, ''Rousseau: The Discourses and other early political writings'', Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 393–4. The essay was mentioned in Rousseau's 1762 book, ''Emile, or On Education''. In this text, Rousseau lays out a narrative of the beginnings of language, using a similar literary form as the Second Discourse. Rousseau writes that language (as well as the human race) developed in southern warm climates and then migrated northwards to colder climates. In its inc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (, ; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the development of modern political, economic, and educational thought. His ''Discourse on Inequality'' and ''The Social Contract'' are cornerstones in modern political and social thought. Rousseau's sentimental novel ''Julie, or the New Heloise'' (1761) was important to the development of preromanticism and romanticism in fiction. His ''Emile, or On Education'' (1762) is an educational treatise on the place of the individual in society. Rousseau's autobiographical writings—the posthumously published '' Confessions'' (composed in 1769), which initiated the modern autobiography, and the unfinished '' Reveries of the Solitary Walker'' (composed 1776–1778)—exemplified the late 18th-century " Age of Sensibility", and featured an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Origin Of Speech
The origin of speech refers to the general problem of the origin of language in the context of the physiological development of the human speech organs such as the tongue, lips, and vocal organs used to produce phonological units in all spoken languages. The origin of speech has been studied through many fields and topics such as: evolution, anatomy, and history of linguistics. The origin of speech is related to the more general problem of the origin of language, the evolution of distinctively human speech capacities has become a distinct and in many ways separate area of scientific research. The topic is a separate one because language is not necessarily spoken: it can equally be written or signed. Speech is in this sense optional, although it is the default modality for language. Background There are many different theories and ideas that give us a theoretical framework of how speech in humans originated. Multiple of these theories play on the idea of how humans evolved ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosophy Essays
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some sources claim the term was coined by Pythagoras ( BCE), although this theory is disputed by some. Philosophical methods include questioning, critical discussion, rational argument, and systematic presentation. in . Historically, ''philosophy'' encompassed all bodies of knowledge and a practitioner was known as a ''philosopher''."The English word "philosophy" is first attested to , meaning "knowledge, body of knowledge." "natural philosophy," which began as a discipline in ancient India and Ancient Greece, encompasses astronomy, medicine, and physics. For example, Newton's 1687 ''Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy'' later became classified as a book of physics. In the 19th century, the growth of modern research universitie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Essays Published Posthumously
An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal and informal: formal essays are characterized by "serious purpose, dignity, logical organization, length," whereas the informal essay is characterized by "the personal element (self-revelation, individual tastes and experiences, confidential manner), humor, graceful style, rambling structure, unconventionality or novelty of theme," etc. Essays are commonly used as literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. Almost all modern essays are written in prose, but works in verse have been dubbed essays (e.g., Alexander Pope's '' An Essay on Criticism'' and ''An Essay on Man''). While brevity usually defines an essay, voluminous works like John Locke's '' An ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Age Of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment; german: Aufklärung, "Enlightenment"; it, L'Illuminismo, "Enlightenment"; pl, Oświecenie, "Enlightenment"; pt, Iluminismo, "Enlightenment"; es, La Ilustración, "Enlightenment" was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries with global influences and effects. The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on the value of human happiness, the pursuit of knowledge obtained by means of reason and the evidence of the senses, and ideals such as liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, and constitutional government. The Enlightenment was preceded by the Scientific Revolution and the work of Francis Bacon, John Locke, and others. Some date the beginning of the Enlightenment to the publication of René Descartes' ''Discourse on the Method'' in 1637, featuring his famous dictum, ''Cogito, ergo sum'' ("I think, therefore I am"). Others cite the publication of Isaac Newto ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
18th-century Essays
The 18th century lasted from January 1, 1701 ( MDCCI) to December 31, 1800 ( MDCCC). During the 18th century, elements of Enlightenment thinking culminated in the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions. During the century, slave trading and human trafficking expanded across the shores of the Atlantic, while declining in Russia, China, and Korea. Revolutions began to challenge the legitimacy of monarchical and aristocratic power structures, including the structures and beliefs that supported slavery. The Industrial Revolution began during mid-century, leading to radical changes in human society and the environment. Western historians have occasionally defined the 18th century otherwise for the purposes of their work. For example, the "short" 18th century may be defined as 1715–1789, denoting the period of time between the death of Louis XIV of France and the start of the French Revolution, with an emphasis on directly interconnected events. To historians who expand the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Universal Grammar
Universal grammar (UG), in modern linguistics, is the theory of the genetic component of the language faculty, usually credited to Noam Chomsky. The basic postulate of UG is that there are innate constraints on what the grammar of a possible human language could be. When linguistic stimuli are received in the course of language acquisition, children then adopt specific syntactic rules that conform to UG. The advocates of this theory emphasize and partially rely on the poverty of the stimulus (POS) argument and the existence of some universal properties of natural human languages. However, the latter has not been firmly established, as some linguists have argued languages are so diverse that such universality is rare. It is a matter of empirical investigation to determine precisely what properties are universal and what linguistic capacities are innate. Argument The theory of universal grammar proposes that if human beings are brought up under normal conditions (not those of ex ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Symbolic Culture
Symbolic culture, or nonmaterial culture, is the ability to learn and transmit behavioral traditions from one generation to the next by the invention of things that exist entirely in the symbolic realm. Symbolic culture is usually conceived as the cultural realm constructed and inhabited uniquely by ''Homo sapiens'' and is differentiated from ordinary culture, which many other animals possess. Symbolic culture is studied by archaeologists, social anthropologists and sociologists. From 2018, however, some evidence of a Neanderthal origin of symbolic culture emerged. Symbolic culture contrasts with material culture, which involves physical entities of cultural value and includes the usage, consumption, creation, and trade of objects. Examples of symbolic culture include concepts (such as good and evil), mythical inventions (such as gods and underworlds), and social constructs (such as promises and football games). Symbolic culture is a domain of objective facts whose existence depend ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sociocultural Evolution
Sociocultural evolution, sociocultural evolutionism or social evolution are theories of sociobiology and cultural evolution that describe how societies and culture change over time. Whereas sociocultural development traces processes that tend to increase the complexity of a society or culture, sociocultural evolution also considers process that can lead to decreases in complexity ( degeneration) or that can produce variation or proliferation without any seemingly significant changes in complexity (cladogenesis). Sociocultural evolution is "the process by which structural reorganization is affected through time, eventually producing a form or structure which is qualitatively different from the ancestral form". Most of the 19th-century and some 20th-century approaches to socioculture aimed to provide models for the evolution of humankind as a whole, arguing that different societies have reached different stages of social development. The most comprehensive attempt to develop a ge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Signalling Theory
Within evolutionary biology, signalling theory is a body of theoretical work examining communication between individuals, both within species and across species. The central question is when organisms with conflicting interests, such as in sexual selection, should be expected to provide honest signals (no presumption being made of conscious intention) rather than cheating. Mathematical models describe how signalling can contribute to an evolutionarily stable strategy. Signals are given in contexts such as mate selection by females, which subjects the advertising males' signals to selective pressure. Signals thus evolve because they modify the behaviour of the receiver to benefit the signaller. Signals may be honest, conveying information which usefully increases the fitness of the receiver, or dishonest. An individual can cheat by giving a dishonest signal, which might briefly benefit that signaller, at the risk of undermining the signalling system for the whole population. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Recent African Origin Of Modern Humans
In paleoanthropology, the recent African origin of modern humans, also called the "Out of Africa" theory (OOA), recent single-origin hypothesis (RSOH), replacement hypothesis, or recent African origin model (RAO), is the dominant model of the geographic origin and early migration of anatomically modern humans (''Homo sapiens''). It follows the early expansions of hominins out of Africa, accomplished by ''Homo erectus'' and then ''Homo neanderthalensis''. The model proposes a "single origin" of ''Homo sapiens'' in the taxonomic sense, precluding parallel evolution in other regions of traits considered anatomically modern, but not precluding multiple admixture between ''H. sapiens'' and archaic humans in Europe and Asia. ''H. sapiens'' most likely developed in the Horn of Africa between 300,000 and 200,000 years ago, although an alternative hypothesis argues that diverse morphological features of ''H. sapiens'' appeared locally in different parts of Africa and converged due t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proto-Human Language
The Proto-Human language (also Proto-Sapiens, Proto-World) is the hypothetical direct genetic predecessor of all the world's spoken languages. It would not be ancestral to sign languages. The concept is speculative and not amenable to analysis in historical linguistics. It presupposes a monogenetic origin of language, i.e. the derivation of all natural languages from a single origin, presumably at some time in the Middle Paleolithic period. As the predecessor of all '' extant'' languages spoken by modern humans (''Homo sapiens''), Proto-Human language as hypothesised would not necessarily be ancestral to any hypothetical Neanderthal language. Terminology There is no generally accepted term for this concept. Most treatments of the subject do not include a name for the language under consideration (e.g. Bengtson and Ruhlen). The terms ''Proto-World'' and ''Proto-Human'' are in occasional use. Merritt Ruhlen used the term ''Proto-Sapiens''. History of the idea The first s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.png "Click for more on -> Essays Published Posthumously")
