Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Evolution of Language and Cognition

Master's
Language: EnglishStudies in English
Subject area: languages
Qualification: MSc
Kind of studies: full-time studies, part-time studies
Master of Science (MSc)
University website: www.ed.ac.uk
Cognition
Cognition is "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses processes such as attention, the formation of knowledge, memory and working memory, judgment and evaluation, reasoning and "computation", problem solving and decision making, comprehension and production of language. Cognitive processes use existing knowledge and generate new knowledge.
Evolution
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. Evolutionary processes give rise to biodiversity at every level of biological organisation, including the levels of species, individual organisms, and molecules.
Language
Language is a system that consists of the development, acquisition, maintenance and use of complex systems of communication, particularly the human ability to do so; and a language is any specific example of such a system.
Evolution
Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution
Theodosius Dobzhansky, eponymous essay first published in American Biology Teacher in 1973
Language
Henry Drummond: Language is a poor enough means of communication. I think we should use all the words we've got. Besides, there are damned few words that anybody understands!
Inherit the Wind (1960 film), Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee
Language
Many languages fly around the world
producing sparks when they collide
sometimes of hate
sometimes of love
Bei Dao, "Language", in The August Sleepwalker, trans. Bonnie S. McDougall (New York: New Directions, 1990), p. 121
Privacy Policy