Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Acknowledgments -- Part I: Introduction -- 1 Background: the intellectual context -- 2 Getting to the explanation of speech -- Part II: Speech and its origin: the frame/content theory -- 3 The nature of modern hominid speech -- 4 Speech in deep time: how speech got started -- Part III: The relation between ontogeny and phylogeny -- 5 Ontogeny and phylogeny 1: the frame stage -- 6 Ontogeny and phylogeny 2: the frame/content stage -- 7 The origin of words: how frame-stage patterns acquired meanings -- Part IV: Brain organization and the evolution of speech -- 8 Evolution of brain organization for speech: background -- 9 A dual brain system for the frame/content mode -- 10 Evolution of cerebral hemispheric specialization for speech -- Part V: The frame/content theory and generative linguistics -- 11 Generative phonology and the origin of speech -- 12 Generative phonology and the acquisition of speech -- Part VI: A perspective on speech from manual evolution -- 13 An amodal phonology? Implications of the existence of sign language -- Part VII: Last things -- 14 Ultimate causes of speech: genes and memes -- 15 Conclusions -- References -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Z.