The Introduction sets out the central question that this book aims to tackle: when, why, and how did we evolve the peculiar and paradoxical inclination for both war and peace that characterises our species? The book argues that the inclination for both intergroup coalitionary killing and peaceful cooperation have deep roots and that they co-evolved through a gradual, incremental trajectory over millions of years. This co-evolution unfolded in a mosaic-like pattern, with distinct but interacting components emerging at different moments and becoming integrated over evolutionary time.

This chapter introduces the fields in the digital humanities concerned with words, texts, and documents, from textual editing to topic modelling and corpus linguistics.

Chapter 2 studies common and sometimes confusing linguistic expressions in the song lyrics found in the Cantares Mexicanos. The chapter breaks down the many elements of the songs, including typical vocabulary, vocables, Spanish loanwords, micropoetics, metaphors, and then contextualizes them in the larger framework of phrases and stanzas. Finally, the chapter considers whole compositions and engages with new understandings of Aztec (or Mexica) songs that suggest the lyrics were composed in layers and woven together into large compositions. The chapter shows that we are now able to study the lyrics with a clearer grasp of the grammar than we used to have and that they are neither wholly abstract nor impossible to understand.

This chapter provides a brief account of the languages of early Ireland from the earliest attested forms of Ogham (5th century), Old Irish, and Latin (both 7th century) through developments in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries

This chapter explores the definition of Chinese and introduces the field of linguistics and its key sub-disciplines, the two fundamental concepts that set the stage for a study of Chinese linguistics. Chinese is then situated in its geographic and linguistic landscape, elucidating its genetic and contact relationships. The history behind the establishment of Modern Standard Chinese is presented, along with some of its linguistic features. The chapter concludes with a preview of the contents of the rest of the textbook.

Beyond Words is a book of big questions about language. What is language? Where did it come from? How do we learn our mother tongue? How do we learn other languages in addition to our mother tongue? How do we use and understand language? How do we lose language? Collectively, these topics fall under the umbrella of psycholinguistics. Psycholinguistics is the marriage of linguistics and psychology. It is a branch of language science that explores the relationship between language and the human mind. This is a book that takes us down many rabbit holes. It is filled with astonishing research and surprising discoveries. It is about fierce debate and contentious topics that have fascinated us since ancient times and continue to do so today. Language is weird, but also wonderful. Language is intricate and innovative, confusing and complex, mysterious and most of all, it is multifaceted. Language is beyond words.

Classical linguistics and racecraft have an intertwined history, in that Indo-European linguistics arose concurrently with scientific racism, and shares many of the same metaphors and conceptual frameworks. This chapter touches on this shared history, before exploring some aspects of the metalinguistics and sociolinguistics of race in the ancient world. In particular, the concept of ‘linguistic racism’ will be used to look at how ancient texts use lack of (shared) language to imply a lack of humanity, and how non-Greek speakers are compared to animals. It will also look at depictions of foreign-language speakers as the linguistic ‘other’, particularly in depictions of enslaved people.

Chapter 2 begins Part I, “Linguistic Analysis of Linear A,” which consists of Chapters 2 to 5. As the main key to deciphering a script is identifying the language behind it, this chapter strives to present evidence of various types as to the character of the language behind Linear A. As this was the script of the Minoans on Crete in the 2nd millennium BCE, the chapter first outlines the linguistic landscape in the eastern Mediterranean and Near East at this time, mapping out the features of each ancient language in this region along six different parameters: (1) which language family it belongs to; (2) whether its nouns and verbs are inflected with one set of affixes (prefixes/suffixes), or more than one; (3) whether it is inflected with affixes alone, or also in some other way; (4) whether its affixes can serve multiple purposes, or just one; (5) whether its affixes are mostly prefixes or suffixes; and (6) the default order in which the subject, verb, and object occur in its sentences. Other evidence for the nature of the Minoan language is then discussed, including archaeogenetic and archaeological evidence for the origin of the Minoans, and evidence from documents in other cultures.

This comprehensive Glossary contains detailed definitions of over a hundred linguistic terms, together with illustrative examples, to ensure that readers who might not be familiar with some of these terms will not be placed at a disadvantage by the linguistic arguments presented in the book.

Chapter 4 constitutes the final part of the “toolkit” and is focused on research ethics and integrity. In the first half of the chapter, we discuss the purpose of ethics boards and human subjects protections programs, and how to ethically collect language data through various methods of human behavior, including through social media. The second half of the chapter contains a discussion of research integrity and such topics as citing and referencing sources appropriately, what constitutes plagiarism, and stylistic considerations to take when disseminating your work.

Chapter 5 broadly discusses language use in multilingual and multidialectal societies, codeswitching, language birth, and language loss. We include case studies of multilingualism in the Vaupès in Amazonia and the Maghreb in Africa, the intermingled nature of Maltese and Michif, and English-only movements in North America.

Chapter 3 describes and demonstrates the use of several tools of language study, including elicitations, grammaticality judgments, participant observation, discourse analysis, and corpus analyses.

Chapter 6 explores how language development is an important site for learning about language and social issues. First, we provide a brief timeline of language development and how infants and children progress through the stages of development. Then we discuss language socialization and how it differs from culture to culture: we provide case studies from the US, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and Mexico to show how children from each of these cultures are interacted with while they are pre-linguistic. Following that, we discuss the so-called “word gap” and how it is based on claims that are not founded and not replicable. Finally, we discuss literacy socialization in the US and how scholars show that how we are socialized into literate society varies along racial and socioeconomic lines.

In an effort to strengthen linguistic foundations in L2 endeavors and inspire closer interaction and mutual benefit for the allied disciplines, the Conclusion brings together the primary takeaways of the book, proposes future directions for study, and poses remaining questions for those research veins.