Once declared an unworthy pursuit for learned linguists the study of language origins has
recently become a matter of intensive respectable research. The change is understandable
because while the nineteenth-century imaginative linguists could only speculate today's
scientists can soberly investigate and present the hard data that could serve to outline the
gradual evolution that led to the emergence and development of oral communication. Tracing that
process or rather contributing to that effort is the objective of this collection of
articles and the collective endeavor of their authors who from their own specific vantage
points - primatology anthropology anatomy cognition neurology linguistics and sociology -
are presenting data and analyses that will help the reader to gain better insight and clearer
understanding of how humans have developed that fascinating tool of ours - language.
