What was the evolutionary transition that enabled compositional abilities to be recruited for vocal (and gestural) communication? Communicative expression relies on fundamentally temporal processes where several neuro-computational timescales interact with each other during the setting and the linearisation of hierarchical depth. In the Syntax project, we focus on how meaning is regimented into syntactic form for communication.
This requires close attention to how syntactic form varies in humans, and possibly also in animal call combinations. Indeed, full characterization of the within-species dynamics at the phenotype level is a prerequisite for modeling the biological evolution of syntactic expression capabilities. We address these issues in three work packages that focus on specific aspects of syntax : WP Events, Hierarchy and Locality.
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WP Events
In WP Events, we follow up on our hypothesis that the key evolutionary transition is more in expressive than conceptual abilities, focusing specifically on the difference between simple (“intransitive”) events with a single participant and complex (“transitive”) events with more than one participant.
Event Cognition Task
█ █ █ █ PIs: Bickel, Daum, Zuberbühler; Collaborating PIs: Giraud, Stoll, Townsend
Transitivity Task
█ █ PIs: Bickel, Mansfield, Stoll; Collaborating PI: Zuberbühler
WP Hierarchy
WP Hierarchy takes a neuroscience perspective to ask how hierarchical structure is deployed in language and how this deployment has evolved in the hominin lineage.
Hierarchy Computation Task
█ █ █ PIs: Henderson, Garner; Collaborating PIs: Giraud, Bickel, Sennrich, Kazanina; Senior Researcher: Olasagasti
Hierarchy Implementation Task
█ █ PIs: Meyer, Giraud, Bickel Kazanina; Collaborating PIs: Hervais-Adelman; Senior Researcher: Olasagasti
Hominin Planning Task
█ █ PIs: Migliano, Meyer; Collaborating PIs:
WP Locality
When hierarchical meaning dependencies are linearized, this often necessitates the separation of meaningful units (for example, the modifier “interesting” separates the object “book” from its verb in “read interesting books”). The WP Locality probes the mechanisms that drive the balance between local vs. nonlocal dependencies in linguistic evolution and assesses the extent to which non-local dependencies might have precursors in primate call combinations.
Locality Dynamics Task
█ █ PIs: Bickel, Stoll, Sennrich; Collaborating PIs: Mansfield, Stadler, Furrer
Locality Processing Task
█ █ PIs: Golestani, Meyer; Collaborating PIs: Bickel, Giroud, Kazanina
Call Locality Task
█ █ █ PIs: Burkart, Townsend; Collaborating PIs: Bickel, Zuberbühler, Kazanina