ABSTRACT
What were the early changes that created differentiation between the
communication abilities of hominids and their primate relatives? In recent years,
much has been written about the obvious difference between humans and non-
humans in the ability to manipulate the syntax of language, producing creative,
complex sentences from a rich repertoire of lexical material (e.g., Pinker &
Bloom, P., 1990). Further scholarship has been devoted to the origins of lexical
items themselves (e.g., Deacon, 1997; Gärdenfors, 2004; Sinha, 2004). Peter
MacNeilage, to whom this volume is dedicated, has focused on the fact that the
rich developments of syntax and even of lexicon, depend upon a logically prior
ability to produce controlled, well-formed syllables (MacNeilage, 1998;
MacNeilage & Davis, 1990a, 1990b; MacNeilage, Davis, & Matyear, 1997).
