ArticleBiology & philosophy2025
A bounded hierarchy framework for the evolution of syntax.
Article in Biology & philosophy, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
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1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Utterance evolution: the road to generative, combinatorial communicators.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
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Abstract
Is syntax an evolutionary novelty in the human lineage? This question, along with the question of how human syntax evolved, is highly debated in the field of language evolution. In this paper, I reconstruct two prominent frameworks for studying the evolution of human syntax, which I call "unbounded hierarchy" (Bolhuis et al. 2018 in PLoS Biol 16(6):e2005157, 2018. 10.1371/journal.pbio.2005157) and "compositional semantics" (Townsend et al. 2018 in PLoS Biol 16(8):e2006425, 2018. 10.1371/journal.pbio.2006425). I argue that both frameworks face problems when it comes to explaining the evolution of human syntax. Considering these problems, as well as empirical evidence of hierarchy in nonhuman animals, I provide an alternative framework for studying the evolution of human syntax, which I call "bounded hierarchy". The bounded hierarchy framework that I propose traces the evolutionary origins of human syntax to simpler forms of bounded hierarchy that may be present in extant nonhuman animals.
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