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dc.contributor.authorWilson, Vanessa A D
dc.contributor.authorZuberbühler, Klaus
dc.contributor.authorBickel, Balthasar
dc.date.accessioned2022-07-08T11:30:18Z
dc.date.available2022-07-08T11:30:18Z
dc.date.issued2022-06-24
dc.identifier.citationWilson , 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.abn8464en
dc.identifier.issn2375-2548
dc.identifier.otherPURE: 280300097
dc.identifier.otherPURE UUID: acfdaf1e-1376-422e-84f7-2df9c5dfe326
dc.identifier.otherPubMed: 35731868
dc.identifier.otherScopus: 85131062463
dc.identifier.otherWOS: 000814518800013
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10023/25636
dc.descriptionFunding: 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.abstractLanguages 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.extent12
dc.language.isoeng
dc.relation.ispartofScience Advancesen
dc.rightsCopyright © 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.subjectAnimalsen
dc.subjectBiological Evolutionen
dc.subjectCognitionen
dc.subjectHominidaeen
dc.subjectHumansen
dc.subjectLanguageen
dc.subjectPrimatesen
dc.subjectBF Psychologyen
dc.subject.lccBFen
dc.titleThe evolutionary origins of syntax : event cognition in nonhuman primatesen
dc.typeJournal itemen
dc.description.versionPublisher PDFen
dc.contributor.institutionUniversity of St Andrews. School of Psychology and Neuroscienceen
dc.contributor.institutionUniversity of St Andrews. Institute of Behavioural and Neural Sciencesen
dc.contributor.institutionUniversity of St Andrews. Centre for Social Learning & Cognitive Evolutionen
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abn8464
dc.description.statusPeer revieweden


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