Talk of linguistic universals has given cognitive scientists the impression that languages are
all built to a common pattern. In fact, there are vanishingly few universals of language in the …

Recent research suggests that language evolution is a process of cultural change, in which
linguistic structures are shaped through repeated cycles of learning and use by domain …

This paper argues that the origins of language can be detected one million years ago, if not
earlier, in the archaeological record of Homo erectus. This controversial claim is based on a …

The idea of a biologically evolved, universal grammar with linguistic content is a myth,
perpetuated by three spurious explanatory strategies of generative linguists. To make …

Despite a shared recognition that the design of the human mind and the design of human
culture are tightly linked, researchers in the evolutionary social sciences tend to specialize in …

Highlights•Formal models of temporal pattern complexity provide poor models for behavior
and neurobiological mechanisms.•Syntactic processing in songbirds resembles human …

Our response takes advantage of the wide-ranging commentary to clarify some aspects of
our original proposal and augment others. We argue against the generative critics of our …

While endorsing Evans & Levinson's (E&L's) call for rigorous documentation of variation, we
defend the idea of Universal Grammar as a toolkit of language acquisition mechanisms. The …

I present the so-called Verb-Object Constraint as a serious proposal for a true linguistic
universal. It provides an example of the kind of abstraction in linguistic analysis that seems …

The natural languages that underlie human communication are remarkably expressive,
robust and well-adapted to the communicative needs of their users. However, the question …