This volume contains a contemporary, integrated description of the processes of language. The contributors, all experts in their fields, address language in the brain, production of sentences and dialogues, language learning, transmission and evolutionary processes that happen over centuries or millenia, the relation between language and genes, the origins of language, self-organization, and language competition and death. From the contents: 5. Evolution: Language Use and the Evolution of Languages (William Croft); 10. Environment: Language Ecology and Language Death (Suzanne Romaine).