Evidence map›Paper›PMID 33391062›Full record

ArticleFrontiers in psychology2020

Formal Syntax and Deep History.

Andrea Ceolin, Cristina Guardiano, Monica Alexandrina Irimia, Giuseppe Longobardi

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
3citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

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.

2 · The registry

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.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

3 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. At the boundaries of syntactic prehistory.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021
    Article
  3. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Andrea CeolinDepartment of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States.
Cristina GuardianoDipartimento di Comunicazione ed Economia, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Reggio Emilia, Italy.
Monica Alexandrina IrimiaDipartimento di Comunicazione ed Economia, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Reggio Emilia, Italy.
Giuseppe LongobardiDepartment of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York, York, United Kingdom.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

We show that, contrary to long-standing assumptions, syntactic traits, modeled here within the generative biolinguistic framework, provide insights into deep-time language history. To support this claim, we have encoded the diversity of nominal structures using 94 universally definable binary parameters, set in 69 languages spanning across up to 13 traditionally irreducible Eurasian families. We found a phylogenetic signal that distinguishes all such families and matches the family-internal tree topologies that are safely established through classical etymological methods and datasets. We have retrieved "near-perfect" phylogenies, which are essentially immune to homoplastic disruption and only moderately influenced by horizontal convergence, two factors that instead severely affect more externalized linguistic features, like sound inventories. This result allows us to draw some preliminary inferences about plausible/implausible cross-family classifications; it also provides a new source of evidence for testing the representation of diversity in syntactic theories.

Indexed as

biolinguisticsformal syntaxlanguage reconstructionparametersphylogenetics

Identifiers

PMID33391062
PMCPMC7775603

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
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Registered trials

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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.