ArticlePsychonomic bulletin & review2017
Culture and biology in the origins of linguistic structure.
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 39 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
39 citing papers in PubMed.
- Language-like statistical structure arises in learned signaling: evidence from birdsong.Science advances · 2026Article
- Symmetry in category systems across languages.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Ceramides and neuroinflammation as immunometabolic drivers and biomarkers of major depressive disorder, treatment-resistant depression, and suicidal vulnerability.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2026Review
- When the City Speaks: How Urban Form Shapes the Cultural Transmission of Spatial Conceptualization.Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science · 2026Article
- Analogies evolve by increasing transmission fidelity in the communication of complex information.Evolutionary human sciences · 2026Article
- Memetics and the Parallel Architecture.Topics in cognitive science · 2025Article
- Norms emerge through iterated learning.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Constructed languages are processed by the same brain mechanisms as natural languages.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Constructed languages are processed by the same brain mechanisms as natural languages.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- From Empirical Problem-Solving to Theoretical Problem-Finding Perspectives on the Cognitive Sciences.Computational brain & behavior · 2024Article
- The Evolution of the Optimization of Cognitive and Social Functions in the Cerebellum and Thereby the Rise of Homo sapiens Through Cumulative Culture.Cerebellum (London, England) · 2024Review
- Language-like efficiency and structure in house finch song.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Genetic Modifications of Developmental Dyslexia and Its Representation Using In Vivo, In Vitro Model.Global medical genetics · 2024Review
- Lessons for Theory from Scientific Domains Where Evidence is Sparse or Indirect.Computational brain & behavior · 2024Article
- Hierarchical structures emerge from the cultural transmission: an iterated learning experiment using a non-linguistic task.Frontiers in artificial intelligence · 2023Article
- Biolinguistics: A Scientometric Analysis of Research on (Children's) Molecular Genetics of Speech and Language (Disorders).Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- The evolutionary origins of syntax: Event cognition in nonhuman primates.Science advances · 2022Review
- Emerging Grounded Shared Vocabularies Between Human and Machine, Inspired by Human Language Evolution.Frontiers in artificial intelligence · 2022Article
- Dyslexia associated geneFrontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2022Article
- Modeling Discontinuous Cultural Evolution: The Impact of Cross-Domain Transfer.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Language is systematically structured at all levels of description, arguably setting it apart from all other instances of communication in nature. In this article, I survey work over the last 20 years that emphasises the contributions of individual learning, cultural transmission, and biological evolution to explaining the structural design features of language. These 3 complex adaptive systems exist in a network of interactions: individual learning biases shape the dynamics of cultural evolution; universal features of linguistic structure arise from this cultural process and form the ultimate linguistic phenotype; the nature of this phenotype affects the fitness landscape for the biological evolution of the language faculty; and in turn this determines individuals' learning bias. Using a combination of computational simulation, laboratory experiments, and comparison with real-world cases of language emergence, I show that linguistic structure emerges as a natural outcome of cultural evolution once certain minimal biological requirements are in place.
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.