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PUBLIC TALK: Where did language come from?

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Today's date is Thursday, March 28, 2024
Where did language come from? Other events...
A public lecture by Michael Corballis, Emeritus Professor of Psychology, University of Auckland.

From the Bible to Chomsky, language is a miracle, unique to humans, and emerging as a single event, initially in a single individual, within the past 100,000 years.

In this lecture, Professor Corballis will argue instead for a Darwinian approach. Language evolved primarily to allow our species, and its forebears, to communicate about the nonpresent and share mental travels in space and time. Mental time travel itself goes far back in evolution, and our capacity to communicate about it emerged through gesture and pantomime, gradually refining into the miniaturized form of gesture that we call speech.

Michael Corballis is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Auckland. He was born and educated in New Zealand, then obtained his PhD from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where he taught for some years before returning to Auckland. In 2016 he received the Rutherford Medal of the Royal Society of New Zealand for his work on brain asymmetry, language evolution, and mental time travel. His latest book is 'The Truth about Language', published by University of Chicago Press in 2017.
Location Austin Lecture Theatre, UWA Arts Building
Contact Institute of Advanced Studies <[email protected]> : 6488 1340
URL http://www.ias.uwa.edu.au/lectures/corballis
Start Tue, 02 Oct 2018 18:00
End Tue, 02 Oct 2018 19:00
RSVP RSVP is required.
Submitted by Audrey Barton <[email protected]>
Last Updated Mon, 03 Sep 2018 09:37
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