The Current Status of the Gestural Theory of Language Origin

Hewes, Gordon W.

doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.1976.tb25512.x

Cited by 118 publications

(20 citation statements)

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“…Moreover, such information would also be of relevance to arguments that have been presented in support of the important role of gestures in the evolution of language (Bradshaw & Nettleton, 1982;Hewes, 1976).…”

Section: Infants' Hand Preferences For Actions and Gesturesmentioning

confidence: 85%

Infants' hand preferences for actions and gestures

Young

Lock

1985

Developmental Neuropsychology

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Section: Infants' Hand Preferences For Actions and Gesturesmentioning

confidence: 85%

Infants' hand preferences for actions and gestures

Young

Lock

1985

Developmental Neuropsychology

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“…The general scenario of an upright posture leading to tool use, gesture and on to language (Hewes, 1976) is a popular one. However, gesture comes too late in the sequence, as chimpanzees share many gestures with us (Harri & Reynolds, 1984), and so too must have our common ancestor.…”

Section: The Further Evolution Of Human Patterns Of Dextralitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Animal asymmetry and human heredity: Dextrality, tool use and language in evolution–10 years after Walker (1980)

Bradshaw

1991

British J of Psychology

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At the time of the last major review on this subject in the British Journal of Psychology (Walker, 1980) there was, with a few notable exceptions, little evidence of anatomical or behavioural asymmetries in non-human species at all comparable to our own. In the past decade the picture has changed dramatically, and now includes invertebrates from the Cambrian formations of half a billion years ago, many species of birds, rats and mice, antelopes, cats, dogs, whales, and primates. Asymmetries may differ as a function of sex (including hormone status-females of many species including humans appearing more lateralized at a motor level), developmental status and environmental influences. Effects may be manifest anatomically (limb or brain dimensions), or at a sensory, cognitive or motor level (paw preference, turning biases). A recurring observation across species is that the right hemisphere seems to be weakly specialized for spatial and emotional roles, and the left for learning, discriminatory and communicatory functions. Three million years ago our hominid ancestors were more or less fully bipedal, developed the first stone tools and were dextral in manipulating them. However, tool use seems not to have driven the evolution of language, our other strongly lateralized capacity. Evolutionary scenarios for bipedalism, tool use and language are discussed, together with the question of whether human language is continuous, in an evolutionary sense, with earlier primate call systems.

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“…A link between handedness in nonhuman primates and language in humans is suggested by the theories which imply that lateralized control of the hand used preferentially in complex tool making and in gestural language favored lateralization of human speech mechanisms in the same hemisphere (Hewes, 1976;Montagu, 1976;Steklis & Hamad, 1976).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%