ArticleFrontiers in psychology2016
A Gradualist Scenario for Language Evolution: Precise Linguistic Reconstruction of Early Human (and Neandertal) Grammars.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 75 citations in OpenAlex.
- Survival of the wittiest (not friendliest): The art and science behind human linguistic and cognitive evolution.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Linguistic capacity was present in theFrontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Syntax and the brain: language evolution as the missing link(ing theory)?Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- The gradual coevolution of syntactic combinatorics and categorization under the effects of human self-domestication: a proposal.Cognitive processing · 2023Article
- Overlooked evidence for semantic compositionality and signal reduction in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).Animal cognition · 2022Article
- 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
- Differentiation Between Agents and Patients in the Putative Two-Word Stage of Language Evolution.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- From Physical Aggression to Verbal Behavior: Language Evolution and Self-Domestication Feedback Loop.Frontiers in psychology · 2019Article
- Minimalism in the Light of Biology: What to Retain and What to Discard?Frontiers in psychology · 2019Article
- Infinite Generation of Language Unreachable From a Stepwise Approach.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
- Neural Correlates of Syntax and Proto-Syntax: Evolutionary Dimension.Frontiers in psychology · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In making an argument for the antiquity of language, based on comparative evidence, Dediu and Levinson (2013) express hope that some combinations of structural features will prove so conservative that they will allow deep linguistic reconstruction. I propose that the earliest stages of syntax/grammar as reconstructed in Progovac (2015a), based on a theoretical and data-driven linguistic analysis, provide just such a conservative platform, which would have been commanded also by Neandertals and the common ancestor. I provide a fragment of this proto-grammar, which includes flat verb-noun compounds used for naming and insult (e.g.,
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.