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A 7 page book analysis of Philip Lieberman's "Uniquely Human" and a discussion of its literary reception. The text asserts among other things that human language evolved relatively recently, approximately within the last 100,000 years, and that in doing so it added speech and syntax to older communication systems. Bibliography lists 11 sources.
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7 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_Uniquely.doc
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doing so it added speech and syntax to older communication systems. He further asserts that the evolution of human speech, complex syntax, creative thought, and some aspects of morality
are linked, and that speech adapted for rapid communication was the driving force in the creation of modern humans (1-2). He attempted to use the archaeological record, comparative psychology
and physiology, and a synthetic view theory of evolution to support his thesis. It is in the realms of his conclusions using comparative physiology and psychology that the most
recent controversy regarding his position has been generated, but his work has been attacked as being overly speculative and not fairly representing his sources. In order to understand the opinions
of others in his field, the basic assertions of his book must be examined. First, in noting that chimpanzees can be taught to ape human language by signing certain
vocabulary words, Lieberman notes that they cannot produce grammatical sentences, produce works of art or complex devices, or exhibit any higher moral sense (1). With that comparison, he proceeds
to state that evolution has created in man, but not in other primates, a complex of speech, syntax, creative thought, and morality which are linked. The mechanism for the
production of these qualities in man derive from the physical setup of the brain. Lieberman rejects "modular theory," the claim that the brain is a set of modules or
organs, each of which corresponds to or controls a specific behavior, and identifies it as derivative in part from models of machine design (12-13). Instead, he focuses on a
model that features circuitry as its idiom, with the studies of aphasia which result from disconnection of different parts of the brain by trauma as a basis (14). Neural
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