Evidence map›Paper›PMID 36438635›Full record

ArticleFrontiers in human neuroscience2022

On the representation of hierarchical structure: Revisiting Darwin's musical protolanguage.

Shigeru Miyagawa, Analía Arévalo, Vitor A Nóbrega

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Frontiers in human neuroscience, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

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0citing papers in PubMed
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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

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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

0 citing papers in PubMed.

No citing paper in PubMed yet.

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

3 authors.

Shigeru MiyagawaDepartment of Linguistics and Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States.
Analía ArévaloSchool of Medicine, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
Vitor A NóbregaInstitute of Romance Studies, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

In this article, we address the tenability of Darwin's musical protolanguage, arguing that a more compelling evolutionary scenario is one where a prosodic protolanguage is taken to be the preliminary step to represent the hierarchy involved in linguistic structures within a linear auditory signal. We hypothesize that the establishment of a prosodic protolanguage results from an enhancement of a rhythmic system that transformed linear signals into speech prosody, which in turn can mark syntactic hierarchical relations. To develop this claim, we explore the role of prosodic cues on the parsing of syntactic structures, as well as neuroscientific evidence connecting the evolutionary development of music and linguistic capacities. Finally, we entertain the assumption that the capacity to generate hierarchical structure might have developed as part of tool-making in human prehistory, and hence was established prior to the enhancement of a prosodic protolinguistic system.

Indexed as

birdsongbrain and languagelanguageprosodyprotolanguagesyntax

Identifiers

PMID36438635
PMCPMC9692108

What OpenQuestion holds

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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.