Bernd Heine is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at the Institute of African Studies, University of Cologne. His 33 books include Possession: Cognitive sources, forces, and grammaticalization (CUP, 1997); Auxiliaries: Cognitive Forces and Grammaticalization (OUP, 1993); Cognitive Foundations of Grammar (USA, 1997); with Derek Nurse, African Languages: An Introduction (CUP, 2000), A Linguistic Geography of Africa (CUP, to appear 2007). Tania Kuteva is Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Düsseldorf and author of Auxiliation: An Enquiry into the Nature of Grammaticalization (OUP, 2001).Bernd Heine and Tania Kuteva are the joint authors of World Lexicon of Grammaticalization (CUP, 2002) and Language Contact and Grammatical Change (CUP, 2005), and The Changing Languages of Europe (OUP, 2006).

• 1. Introduction ; 2. An Outline of Grammatical Evolution ; 3. Some Cognitive Abilities of Animals ; 4. On Pidgins and Other Restricted Linguistic Systems ; 5. Clause Subordination ; 6. On The Rise of Recursion ; 7. Early Language ; References ; Subject Index

Heine and Kutevas book is a wonderful, illuminating, exhaustive introduction to the subject of language evolution. It affords the reader a wide-ranging, comprehensive overview of the topic and relevant literature. It outlines the core issues, notes the perennial puzzles, and wades boldly into the bitter controversies that have dogged the discussion ever since its inception. Above all, the book reminds us that, however frustrating the topic may be, a true understanding of the phenomenon of language, and thus of human culture and cognition, is only possible within an evolutionary framework.