Becoming Eloquent -- Title page -- LCC data -- Table of contents -- Introduction -- Background -- Language and archaeology -- Language and genes -- Language acquisition and language universals -- Language and animal communication -- Language evolution and computer modelling -- Conclusion -- Language and archaeology -- From the origin of language to the diversification of languages -- Introduction -- How to test scenarios for the origin of modernity and language -- Language and the archaeological record -- The earliest use of pigment -- Abstract and depictional engravings -- Personal ornaments -- Burial practices -- The earliest evidence for musical traditions -- Language, anatomy and encephalization -- Concluding remarks -- Acknowledgements -- References -- Early diffusion of domestic bovids in Europe -- Anthropic dissemination of exotic species as a tracer of human movements and contacts. -- The origin of domestic bovids in Europe: A not so simple question. -- At the beginning of the story: The near east. -- First diffusions, first acclimatisation and new technical skills. -- Europe as a new world. -- Small stock -- Cattle. -- Conclusions -- Acknowledgements -- References -- Language and genes -- Linguistic, cultural and genetic perspectives on human diversity in west-central Africa -- Introduction -- Aspects of linguistic and cultural diversity in west-central Africa -- Farming villagers vs. Pygmy hunter-gatherers -- Synchronic linguistic distributions -- Processes capable of accounting for the nowadays patterns -- The Fang enigma -- Analysis of maternal lineages (mtDNA) in west-central African populations -- Maternal lineages in Bantu agriculturalists and Pygmy hunter-gatherers -- MtDNA population structure -- Analysis of paternal lineages (Y chromosome) in west-central African populations.

Paternal lineages in Bantu agriculturalists and Pygmy hunter-gatherers -- Y-chromosome population structure -- Conclusions -- Relationships between groups of farming villagers -- Farming villagers vs. semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers -- Fang enigma -- Overall study of human genetic diversity of west-central Africa -- Future research -- References -- The Berber and the Berbers -- The Berber case -- Genetic results -- GM allotypes -- Alu sequences -- Mitochondrial DNA -- Y chromosome -- Synthesis -- Acknowledgements -- References -- East meets West: The Assam corridor -- Introduction: the region and the problem -- A/ Population density, its causes and side-effects -- B/ Politics, identity and ecology -- C/ Language distribution and historical population movements -- D/ The logic of being somewhere -- Conclusion: Local and wider knowledge about populations -- References -- Genetic and linguistic diversity in Central Asia -- Introduction -- Historical background -- Long term settlement -- Recent invasions -- Methodology -- Sampled populations -- Molecular study -- Mt DNA -- Y-chromosome -- X and autosomal neutral markers -- Statistical analysis -- Linguistic data. -- Linguistic distance method -- Results and discussion on genetic diversity: -- Autosomal markers: strong differences between the two main language families -- Social organisation: lesson from Uniparental markers and autosome -X comparison -- Results on linguistic diversity -- Correlation between genetic and linguistic distances -- Cases where Linguistic and genetic do not match -- Turkmen: language shift through elite dominance? -- Conclusion -- List of collaborators on our project on Central Asia: -- References -- Genetic and linguistic borders in the Himalayan Region -- Introduction -- Methods -- Planning of the project -- Sample processing -- Genotyping -- Statistical analyses.

Results and discussion -- Acknowledgements -- References -- Language acquisition and language universals -- From babbling to first words in four languages -- Introduction -- Early development of speech production capacities in modern infants -- Perceptual influences on early speech production preferences -- Method -- Participants -- Data collection -- Language dictionaries -- Data analysis -- Results -- Consonant and vowel frequencies -- Consonant manner of articulation -- Consonant place of articulation -- Vowel types -- Height vs. Front-back changes in CVCV sequences -- Manner vs. place changes in CVCV sequences -- Discussion -- Research directions -- Acknowledgements -- References -- Language and animal communication -- The primate roots of human language -- Introduction -- Origins of articulation -- Ontogenetic flexibility -- Mechanisms of articulation -- Semantic encoding -- Production of syntactic cues -- Pragmatics of call production -- Call comprehension -- Responses to semantic cues -- Responses to syntactic cues -- Responses to pragmatic cues -- Vocal communication in apes -- Conclusions -- Acknowledgments -- References -- Language evolution and computer modeling -- Can agent-based language evolution contribute to archeology? -- Introduction -- Agent-based models -- Experimental results -- Lexical experiments -- Experiments in grammar evolution -- Feature structures and inference rules -- Flexibility and variation -- Meta-level problem solving -- Role of cultural evolution -- Starting a dialog -- Complex categorizations of the world -- Symbolism -- Functional thinking for tool use -- Cooperative activities -- Recruitment instead of genetics -- Conclusions -- References -- Index.