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Origins of Language

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Code Biology

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Abstract

The idea that man is different from animals is present in all cultures and is generally expressed by saying that only man has ‘higher’ faculties like consciousness, free will, morality and the creative power to produce art, religion, science, and poetry (together with torture, mass murder, and environmental disasters). Today we have a shorter explanation for all that. All we need to say is that only man has language. The rest is just a consequence of that one faculty, so it is the origin of language that we need to understand if we want to find out what made us human.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Morfologia ed Embriologia, University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy

    Marcello Barbieri

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  1. Marcello Barbieri
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Barbieri, M. (2015). Origins of Language. In: Code Biology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14535-8_8

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