Università Roma Tre

The course deals with the origin of language from an evolutionary perspective. Starting from the comparison between human language and animal communication, two theoretical proposals will be discussed: on the one hand, the hypothesis of those who argue that human language has a continuous relationship with the communication systems of nonhuman animals (in particular, those of the apes); on the other hand, the hypothesis of those who, on the contrary, believe that verbal communication cannot be explained in a continuistic framework. The aim is to present argument in favor of the continuistic models throught the idea that language is originated by the gesture system.