Compositionality in animals and humans
Date
15/08/2018Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
A key step in understanding the evolution of human language involves unravelling the origins of language’s syntactic structure. One approach seeks to reduce the core of syntax in humans to a single principle of recursive combination, merge, for which there is no evidence in other species. We argue for an alternative approach. We review evidence that beneath the staggering complexity of human syntax, there is an extensive layer of nonproductive, nonhierarchical syntax that can be fruitfully compared to animal call combinations. This is the essential groundwork that must be explored and integrated before we can elucidate, with sufficient precision, what exactly made it possible for human language to explode its syntactic capacity, transitioning from simple nonproductive combinations to the unrivalled complexity that we now have.
Citation
Townsend , S W , Engesser , S , Stoll , S , Zuberbühler , K & Bickel , B 2018 , ' Compositionality in animals and humans ' , PLoS One , vol. 16 , no. 8 , e2006425 . https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2006425
Publication
PLoS One
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1932-6203Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2018 Townsend et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Description
Funding: University of Zurich Research Priority Program (grant number URPP, Evolution in Action; URPP U-702-06). Received by SWT and BB. Swiss National Science Foundation (grant number SWT: PP003_163860; SE: PP003_163860; P1ZHP3_151648; KZ grant: 31003A_166458). Received by SWT, SE and KZ. European Research Council under the European Union’s 7th Framework Programme (grant number FP7/2007-2013/ ERC grant agreement no (615988)). Received by SS.Collections
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.