The book presents new and stimulating approaches to the study of language evolution and considers their implications for future research. Leading scholars from linguistics, primatology, anthroplogy, and cognitive science consider how language evolution can be understood by means of inference from the study of linked or analogous phenomena in language, animal behaviour, genetics, neurology, culture, and biology. In their introduction the editors show how these approaches can be interrelated and deployed together through their use of comparable forms of inference and the similar conditions they place on the use of evidence.

An Introduction to Statistical Inference and Data Analysis

Emphasizing concepts rather than recipes, An Introduction to Statistical Inference and Its Applications with R provides a clear exposition of the methods of statistical inference for students who are comfortable with mathematical notation. Numerous examples, case studies, and exercises are included. R is used to simplify computation, create figures, and draw pseudorandom samples—not to perform entire analyses.experimental data.

To understand the role of language in public life and the social process in general, we need first a closer understanding of how linguistic knowledge and social factors interact in discourse interpretation. This volume is a major advance towards that understanding. Professor Gumperz here synthesizes fundamental research on communication from a wide variety of disciplines and develops an original and broadly based theory of conversational inference which shows how verbal communication can serve either between individuals of different social and ethnic backgrounds.