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The evolutionary origins of syntax : event cognition in nonhuman primates
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dc.contributor.author | Wilson, Vanessa A D | |
dc.contributor.author | Zuberbühler, Klaus | |
dc.contributor.author | Bickel, Balthasar | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2022-07-08T11:30:18Z | |
dc.date.available | 2022-07-08T11:30:18Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2022-06-24 | |
dc.identifier.citation | Wilson , V A D , Zuberbühler , K & Bickel , B 2022 , ' The evolutionary origins of syntax : event cognition in nonhuman primates ' , Science Advances , vol. 8 , no. 25 , eabn8464 . https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abn8464 | en |
dc.identifier.issn | 2375-2548 | |
dc.identifier.other | PURE: 280300097 | |
dc.identifier.other | PURE UUID: acfdaf1e-1376-422e-84f7-2df9c5dfe326 | |
dc.identifier.other | PubMed: 35731868 | |
dc.identifier.other | Scopus: 85131062463 | |
dc.identifier.other | WOS: 000814518800013 | |
dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/10023/25636 | |
dc.description | Funding: This research received funding from a Swiss National Science Foundation Project grant 310030_185324 (K.Z.) and the NCCR Evolving Language, Swiss National Science Foundation Agreement #51NF40_180888 (B.B. and K.Z.). | en |
dc.description.abstract | Languages tend to encode events from the perspective of agents, placing them first and in simpler forms than patients. This agent bias is mirrored by cognition: Agents are more quickly recognized than patients and generally attract more attention. This leads to the hypothesis that key aspects of language structure are fundamentally rooted in a cognition that decomposes events into agents, actions, and patients, privileging agents. Although this type of event representation is almost certainly universal across languages, it remains unclear whether the underlying cognition is uniquely human or more widespread in animals. Here, we review a range of evidence from primates and other animals, which suggests that agent-based event decomposition is phylogenetically older than humans. We propose a research program to test this hypothesis in great apes and human infants, with the goal to resolve one of the major questions in the evolution of language, the origins of syntax. | |
dc.format.extent | 12 | |
dc.language.iso | eng | |
dc.relation.ispartof | Science Advances | en |
dc.rights | Copyright © 2022 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited. | en |
dc.subject | Animals | en |
dc.subject | Biological Evolution | en |
dc.subject | Cognition | en |
dc.subject | Hominidae | en |
dc.subject | Humans | en |
dc.subject | Language | en |
dc.subject | Primates | en |
dc.subject | BF Psychology | en |
dc.subject.lcc | BF | en |
dc.title | The evolutionary origins of syntax : event cognition in nonhuman primates | en |
dc.type | Journal item | en |
dc.description.version | Publisher PDF | en |
dc.contributor.institution | University of St Andrews. School of Psychology and Neuroscience | en |
dc.contributor.institution | University of St Andrews. Institute of Behavioural and Neural Sciences | en |
dc.contributor.institution | University of St Andrews. Centre for Social Learning & Cognitive Evolution | en |
dc.identifier.doi | https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abn8464 | |
dc.description.status | Peer reviewed | en |
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