ArticlePsychonomic bulletin & review2017
Evolution of language: Lessons from the genome.
Article in Psychonomic bulletin & review, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 55 citations in OpenAlex.
- Ancient regulatory evolution shapes individual language abilities in present-day humans.Science advances · 2026Article
- Natural selection and language genes in humans.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Ancient regulatory evolution shapes individual language abilities in present-day humans.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Evaluating the effects of archaic protein-altering variants in living human adults.Science advances · 2025Article
- Unsupervised evaluation of pre-trained DNA language model embeddings.BMC genomics · 2025Article
- A Critical Perspective on the (Neuro)biological Foundations of Language and Linguistic Cognition.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2024Review
- An economic model and evidence of the evolution of human intelligence in the Middle Pleistocene: Climate change and assortative mating.PloS one · 2023Article
- Language evolution: examining the link between cross-modality and aggression through the lens of disorders.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Examining Individual Differences in Language Learning: A Neurocognitive Model of Language Aptitude.Neurobiology of language (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2021Article
- Language evolution and complexity considerations: The no half-Merge fallacy.PLoS biology · 2019Article
- Neandertal Introgression Sheds Light on Modern Human Endocranial Globularity.Current biology : CB · 2019Article
- Robust Candidates for Language Development and Evolution Are Significantly Dysregulated in the Blood of People With Williams Syndrome.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2019Article
- Constructing a Consensus on Language Evolution? Convergences and Differences Between Biolinguistic and Usage-Based Approaches.Frontiers in psychology · 2019Article
- Diversity of Grammars and Their Diverging Evolutionary and Processing Paths: Evidence From Functional MRI Study of Serbian.Frontiers in psychology · 2018Article
- Is the Capacity for Vocal Learning in Vertebrates Rooted in Fish Schooling Behavior?Evolutionary biology · 2018Review
- The continuing legacy of nature versus nurture in biolinguistics.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2017Article
- Empirical approaches to the study of language evolution.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2017Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The post-genomic era is an exciting time for researchers interested in the biology of speech and language. Substantive advances in molecular methodologies have opened up entire vistas of investigation that were not previously possible, or in some cases even imagined. Speculations concerning the origins of human cognitive traits are being transformed into empirically addressable questions, generating specific hypotheses that can be explicitly tested using data collected from both the natural world and experimental settings. In this article, I discuss a number of promising lines of research in this area. For example, the field has begun to identify genes implicated in speech and language skills, including not just disorders but also the normal range of abilities. Such genes provide powerful entry points for gaining insights into neural bases and evolutionary origins, using sophisticated experimental tools from molecular neuroscience and developmental neurobiology. At the same time, sequencing of ancient hominin genomes is giving us an unprecedented view of the molecular genetic changes that have occurred during the evolution of our species. Synthesis of data from these complementary sources offers an opportunity to robustly evaluate alternative accounts of language evolution. Of course, this endeavour remains challenging on many fronts, as I also highlight in the article. Nonetheless, such an integrated approach holds great potential for untangling the complexities of the capacities that make us human.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.