ArticleBMC biology2017
Q&A: What is human language, when did it evolve and why should we care?
Article in BMC biology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 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
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Natural selection and language genes in humans.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Article
- Review
- Digital remote assessment of speech acoustics in cognitively unimpaired adults: feasibility, reliability and associations with amyloid pathology.Alzheimer's research & therapy · 2024Article
- The impact of alcohol on affiliative verbal behavior: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2024Review
- Mapping brain function in adults and young children during naturalistic viewing with high-density diffuse optical tomography.Human brain mapping · 2024Article
- Human-machine interactions with clinical phrase prediction system, aligning with Zipf's least effort principle?PloS one · 2024Observational
- Exploring the Role of Machine Learning in Diagnosing and Treating Speech Disorders: A Systematic Literature Review.Psychology research and behavior management · 2024Review
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.
Funding
Abstract
Human language is unique among all forms of animal communication. It is unlikely that any other species, including our close genetic cousins the Neanderthals, ever had language, and so-called sign 'language' in Great Apes is nothing like human language. Language evolution shares many features with biological evolution, and this has made it useful for tracing recent human history and for studying how culture evolves among groups of people with related languages. A case can be made that language has played a more important role in our species' recent (circa last 200,000 years) evolution than have our genes.
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.