Public lecture: The evolution of language - past, present and future

Sunday, 13 March 2011

Human language is unique and we have been speaking for around 150,000 years. There are currently around 7,000 different human languages, there have been thousands more in our past, and these languages evolve in a manner like a biological species.

In this Wednesday's penultimate public lecture, Professor Mark Pagel will explore: why we alone as a species have language, how we can trace some elements of language back tens of thousands of years, how we agree on the words we use for some things but not others, and what we can expect of language in an increasingly globalised world.

Lectures are free to attend and no ticket is required. Please visit the Public Lecture Series website for more details or contact Laura Walsh on 0118 378 4313 or email l.j.walsh@reading.ac.uk.

The last lecture in the 2010-11 series is entitled: Human rights - why has our generation discovered human rights? on Wednesday 4 May 2011.