Antonio Benítez-Burraco

Universidad de Sevilla | US · Departamento de Lengua Española, Lingüística y Teoría de la Literatura

Introduction This paper provides proof of concept that neurolinguistic research on human language syntax would benefit greatly by expanding its scope to include evolutionary considerations, as well as non-propositional functions of language, including naming/nicknaming and verbal aggression. In particular, an evolutionary approach can help circumve...

This chapter is part of a larger project, which purports to establish that language evolution involved a complex gene-culture feedback loop among several emerging phenomena that reinforced each other, including (i) advent of cognitive modernity (crucially entailing cross-modal thinking, aka cognitive fluidity); (ii) the beginnings of grammar; (iii)...

This study aims to determine if there are differences in color–emotion association between monolingual speakers of Spanish and Mandarin, depending on how colors are presented (verbally or visually). We tested two groups of 25 speakers of these two languages in two different tasks using the Geneva Emotion Wheel, which encompasses 20 types of emotion...

Linguistic typology has identified many of the aspects that are shared by the world’s languages, as well as aspects in which languages diverge, including infrequent or rare phenomena. Cognitive biases are one important source of language universals through their indirect effect on language change via their impact on language learning and language u...

Los estudios de tipología sociolingüística sugieren que diversos factores sociopolíticos podrían explicar parte de los rasgos estructurales de las lenguas y, en particular, en qué dominios resultan más complejas o más simples. Así, las lenguas habladas por sociedades cerradas (denominadas esotéricas) presentan una fonología y una morfología más com...

Ideophones stand out as promising constructions to be considered as linguistic “fossils”. Allegedly, this is due to some of their distinctive features, including their sound-symbolic nature, ample use of reduplication, reliance on the simplest combinatorial processes, attachment to emotional content, and presumed bootstrapping effects on language a...

Traditionally, many researchers have supported a uniformitarian view whereby all languages are of roughly equal complexity, facilitated by internal trade-offs between complexity at different levels, such as morphology and syntax. The extent to which the speakers’ societies influence the trade-offs has not been well studied. In this paper, we focus...

Swarm Robotics, which studies the collective behaviors of large populations of interacting robots with simple embodied cognition, is an ideal testbed for studying a dominant theory in evolutionary anthropology - the human self-domestication hypothesis - which suggests that much of humans’ uniqueness is the result of an evolutionary process favoring...

There is a research programme in linguistics that is founded on describing language as an emergent phenomenon. This paper clarifies how the core concept of emergence is deployed in this emergentist programme. We show that if one adopts the weak understandings of the concept of language emergence, the emergentist programme is not fundamentally diffe...

Domestication transforms once wild animals into tamed animals that can be then exploited by humans. The process entails modifications in the body, cognition, and behavior that are essentially driven by differences in gene expression patterns. Although genetic and epigenetic mechanisms were shown to underlie such differences, less is known about the...

Language evolution studies are hindered by the circumstance that language does not fossilize, literally speaking. Nonetheless, different proxies or windows to language evolution have been posited, including the so-called linguistic “fossils,” i.e. aspects of present-day languages which can be regarded as approximations of early forms and uses of la...

Basic perceptual abilities are universal, and most people can distinguish between millions of distinct shades. However, languages differ in the set of basic color terms (BCTs) they have. Despite numerous prior studies, the exact number of BCTs in Mandarin (Sino-Tibetan) and Spanish (Indo-European) is still debated. In Mandarin, this number varies f...

The gradual emergence of syntax has been claimed to be engaged in a feedback loop with Human Self-Domestication (HSD), both processes resulting from, and contributing to, enhanced connectivity in selected cortico-striatal networks, which is the mechanism for attenuating reactive aggression, the hallmark of HSD, but also the mechanism of cross-modal...

Our commentary focuses on the interaction between Grossmann's fearful ape hypothesis (FAH) and the human self-domestication hypothesis (HSDH), also taking into account language acquisition and evolution. Although there is considerable overlap between the two hypotheses, there are also some discrepancies, and our goal is to consider the extent to wh...

Human self‐domestication refers to a new evolutionary hypothesis about human origins. According to this view, humans have experienced changes that are similar to those observed in domesticated mammals and that have provided us with many of the behavioural, and perhaps cognitive pre‐requisites for supporting our complex social practices and advanced...

Together with language, music is perhaps the most distinctive behavioral trait of the human species. Different hypotheses have been proposed to explain why only humans perform music and how this ability might have evolved in our species. In this paper, we advance a new model of music evolution that builds on the self-domestication view of human evo...

We review epilepsy-related aphasias in connection with GRIN2A mutations, focusing on acquired childhood epileptic aphasias such as Landau-Kleffner syndrome (LKS). The spontaneous speech of children with LKS exhibits syntactically simplified utterances, severe word finding difficulties, and severe phonological paraphasias. Characterizing LKS as a ne...

Self-domestication could contribute to shaping the biology of human brain and consequently the predisposition to neurodevelopmental disorders. Leveraging genome-wide data from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, we tested the enrichment of self-domestication and neural crest function loci with respect to the heritability of autism spectrum disorde...

Objective: Bipolar disorder (BD) is a severe mental condition characterized by episodes of elevated mood and depression. Being a heritable condition, it features a complex genetic architecture, although it is not still clear how genes contribute to the onset and course of the disease. Method: In this paper we adopted an evolutionary-genomic appr...

Domestication transforms once wild animals into tamed animals that can be then exploited by humans. The process entails modifications in the body, cognition, and behavior that are essentially driven by differences in gene expression patterns. Although genetic and epigenetic mechanisms were shown to underlie such differences, less is known about the...

Recent research has proposed that certain aspects of psychosis, as experienced in, e.g., schizophrenia (SCZ), but also aspects of other cognitive conditions, such as autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and synesthesia, can be related to a shattered sense of the notion of self. In this paper, our goal is to show that altered processing of self can be at...

Objective: In this article, we reexamine the hypothesis of language retrogenesis, that is, the assumption that language change over healthy ageing mirrors, albeit inversely, language acquisition by the child. We additionally question whether this inverse pattern can as well be observed at the cognitive and neurobiological levels, and whether it ca...

Language sciences (and cognitive sciences more generally) need to properly embrace one core feature of human language: variability. In this paper we build on findings about the diversity of language functions, typological differences between languages, and sociolinguistic phenomena to sketch the prolegomena of a cognitive science of variation in la...

This paper examines epilepsy-related aphasias in connection with GRIN2A mutations, focusing on acquired childhood epileptic aphasias, in particular, on Landau-Kleffner syndrome (LKS). Characterizing LKS as neural dysrhythmias, we review how EEG abnormalities typically manifested during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep as electrical status epilep...

Because language does not fossilize, and because scripts only appeared very recently, the sort of languages spoken in Prehistory has been mostly a speculative issue. In this chapter, we rely on the human self-domestication hypothesis (i.e. the claim that our species experienced an evolutionary process similar to domesticated animals, that was trigg...

Similarly to language, play is an essential component of human behavior and culture. However, the links between play and language have been underexamined and often neglected beyond the aesthetic uses of language as found in literature. But playing pervades language. Many aspects of language structure can be related to playing, in part because of th...

It is still debated how many basic color terms (BCTs) Mandarin has and how they are used compared to Western languages like Spanish. For clarifying this, we analysed the performance of 21 Mandarin speakers and 21 European Spanish speakers in two related tasks: the list task and the color naming task. Our results suggest that Mandarin has 9 BCTs in...

Despite numerous prior studies, it is still debated how many basic color terms (BCTs) Mandarin (Sino-Tibetan, China) has and how they are used compared to Western languages like Spanish (Indo-European, Spain). For clarifying this, we compared 21 Mandarin speakers and 21 European Spanish speakers in two related tasks: the list task and the color...

FOXP2 is a gene involved in language development and function. Neanderthals and humans share the same coding region of the gene, although the formers are thought to have exhibited less sophisticated language abilities. In this paper, we report on several human-specific changes in two functional enhancers of FOXP2. Two of these variants are located...

Purpose Chromosome 16p11.2 deletion syndrome (OMIM #611913) is a rare genetic condition resulting from the partial deletion of approximately 35 genes located at Chromosome 16. Affected people exhibit a variable clinical profile, featuring mild dysmorphisms, motor problems, developmental delay, mild intellectual disability (ID), socialization defici...

In order to identify syntactic constructs more commensurate with the postulates of neuroscience, we propose that neurolinguistic research on syntax needs to expand its scope to include less hierarchical syntactic structures, as well as non-propositional and emotional language, both in typical and atypical populations. The reason is that simpler syn...

Contemporary descriptions of ‘feral’ children generally preclude any insightful inference about the language deficits exhibited by these children, as well as the ultimate causes of their problems with language. However, they have been regularly used to support the view that language acquisition requires a proper social environment in order to occur...

Self-domestication could play an important role in contributing to shape the biology of human brain and the predisposition to neurodevelopmental disorders. Leveraging genome-wide data from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, we tested the enrichment of self-domestication and neural crest function loci with respect to the heritability of autism spe...

Analysing language characteristics and understanding their dynamics is the key for a successful intervention by speech and language therapists (SLT). Thus, this review aims to investigate a possible overlap in language development shared by autism spectrum disorders (ASD), specific language impairment (SLI) and social (pragmatic) communication diso...

Human self-domestication refers to a new evolutionary hypothesis about human origins. According to this view, humans have experienced changes that are similar to those observed in domesticated mammals and that have provided us with many of the behavioural, and perhaps cognitive pre-requisites for supporting our complex social practices and advanced...

Copy number variants (CNVs) found in individuals with communication deficits provide a valuable window to the genetic causes of problems with language and, more generally, to the genetic foundation of the human-specific ability to learn and use languages. This paper reports on the language and communication problems of a patient with a microduplica...

Introduction: Copy-number variations (CNVs) impacting on small DNA stretches and associated with language deficits provide a unique window to the role played by specific genes in language function. Methods: We report in detail on the cognitive, language, and genetic features of a girl bearing a small deletion (0.186 Mb) in the 2p16.3 region, arr...

Modern humans exhibit phenotypic traits and molecular events shared with other domesticates that are thought to be by-products of selection for reduced aggression. This is the human self-domestication hypothesis. As one of the first types of responses to a novel environment, epigenetic changes may have also facilitated early self-domestication in h...

Chromosome 16p11.2 Deletion Syndrome (OMIM #611913) is a rare genetic condition resulting from the partial deletion of approximately 25 genes at chromosome 16. Affected people exhibit a variable clinical profile, featuring developmental and language delay, mild intellectual disability (ID), motor problems, social deficits and some autism spectrum d...

This paper builds on a previous proposal that the gradual emergence of syntax in language evolution was engaged in a feedback loop with the effects of Human Self-Domestication (HSD), both processes contributing to enhanced connectivity in the cortico-striatal networks, which is the mechanism for suppressing reactive physical aggression, the hallmar...

Modern humans exhibit phenotypic traits that are shared across independent domestication events, suggesting the human self-domestication hypothesis. Epigenetic changes may facilitate early self-domestication in humans, since they can be the first layer of response to a novel environment. Here, we argue that fish provide model systems to study epige...

Together with language, music is perhaps our most distinctive behavioral trait. As for language, different hypotheses have been proposed to explain why only humans perform music and how this ability might have evolved in the species. In this paper, we advance a new model of music evolution that builds on the self-domestication view of human evoluti...

Subcortical contributions to core linguistic computations pertaining to syntax-semantics remain drastically under-studied. We critique the cortico-centric focus which has largely accompanied research into these higher-order linguistic functions and suggest that, while much remains unknown , there is nevertheless a rich body of research concerning t...

Copy-number variations (CNVs) impacting on small DNA stretches and that are associated to language deficits provide a unique window to the role played by specific genes in language function. We report in detail on the cognitive and language features of a girl bearing a small deletion (0,186 Mb) in the 2p16.3 region (arr[hg19] 2p16.3(50761778-509477...

Together with language, music is perhaps our most distinctive behavioral trait. Following the lead of paleolinguistic research, different hypotheses have been proposed to explain why only humans perform music and how this ability might have evolved in the species. In this paper, we advance a new model of music evolution that builds on the theory of...

Recent research has proposed that certain aspects of psychosis, as experienced in e.g. schizophrenia (SCH), but also aspects of other cognitive conditions, such as autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and synesthesia, can be related to a shattered sense of the notion of self. In this paper, our goal is to show that altered processing of the self can be...

Both the music and social bonding (MSB) hypothesis and the music as a credible signal hypothesis emerge as solid views of how human music and human musicality might have evolved. Nonetheless, both views could be improved (and tested in better ways) with the consideration of the way in which human language(s) might have evolved under the effects of...

Different factors seemingly account for the emergence of present-day languages in our species. Human self-domestication has been recently invoked as one important force favoring language complexity mostly via a cultural mechanism. Because our self-domestication ultimately resulted from selection for less aggressive behavior and increased prosocial...

Background and aim: Human evolution resulted from changes in our biology, behaviour, and culture. One source of these changes has been hypothesised to be our self-domestication (that is, the development in humans of features commonly found in domesticated strains of mammals, seemingly as a result of selection for reduced aggression). Signals of do...

Historically, some cases of ‘feral’ children have been reported. Contemporary descriptions generally preclude any insightful inference about the nature and the extent of the language deficits exhibited by these children, as well as the ultimate causes of their problems with language. However, they have been regularly used to support the view that l...

Both the music and social bonding (MSB) hypothesis and the music as a credible signal hypothesis emerge as solid views of how human music and human musicality might have evolved. Nonetheless, both views could be improved (and tested in better ways) with the consideration of the way in which human language(s) might have evolved under the effects of...

As proposed for the emergence of modern languages, we argue that modern uses of languages (pragmatics) also evolved gradually in our species under the effects of human self‐domestication, with three key aspects involved in a complex feedback loop: (a) a reduction in reactive aggression, (b) the sophistication of language structure (with emerging gr...

Several structurally simplified forms of language (sometimes called, ‘degraded’) have been explored as possible proxies to previous stages in the evolution of language. In this paper, we focus on two of such forms, namely, child language and language in aging. Specifically, we re-examine the hypothesis of language retrogenesis, according to which l...

Feralization is the process by which a once-domesticated animal returns to a wild-like state due to desocialization from humans. Whether feralization results from a true reversion of the physiological and genetic mechanisms underlying domestication or whether it involves a return to a wild state by other means is still a controversial issue. In thi...

Many controversies in language evolution research derive from the fact that language is itself a natural language word, which makes the underlying concept fuzzy and cumbersome, and a common perception is that progress in language evolution research is hindered because researchers do not ‘talk about the same thing’. In this article, we claim that ag...

This theme issue builds on the surge of interest in the field of language evolution as part of the broader field of human evolution, gathering some of the field's most prominent experts in order to achieve a deeper, richer understanding of human prehistory and the nature of prehistoric languages. Taken together, the contributions to this issue begi...

We demonstrate how two linguistic phenomena, figurative language (implicating cross-modality) and derogatory language (implicating aggression), both demand a precise degree of (dis)inhibition in the same cortico-subcortical brain circuits, in particular cortico-striatal networks, whose connectivity has been significantly enhanced in recent evolutio...

Copy number variants (CNVs) found in individuals with communication deficits provide a valuable window to the genetic causes of problems with language and more generally, to the genetic foundation of the human-specific ability to learn and use languages. In this paper, we report in detail on the language and communication problems of a patient with...

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

In this Chapter we first look at the core view of the biology of language associated with Minimalism, including the Biolinguistics Program (section 2). Next, we consider research on the brain (section 3) and genetics (section 4), associated with this framework. Finally, we introduce some subsequent views of language evolution which break away from...

Subcortical contributions to core linguistic computations (pertaining to syntax-semantics) remain drastically under-studied. We critique the cortico-centric focus which has largely accompanied research into these higher-order linguistic functions and suggest that, while much remains unknown, there is nevertheless a rich body of knowledge concerning...

Human self-domestication might have contributed to the evolutionary changes in the hippocampus accounting for our enhanced mental travel abilities, and ultimately for our sophisticated language.

Bipolar disorder is a high prevalent psychiatric condition entailing recurrent episodes of elevated mood and depression, but also diverse cognitive problems. One deficit observed in patients concerns to auditory-verbal processing. Being a hereditary condition with a complex genetic architecture, it is not clear which genes contribute to this defici...

Duplications of the distal region of the short arm of chromosome 9 are rare, but are associated with learning disabilities and behavioral disturbances. We report in detail the cognitive and language features of a child with a duplication in the 9p24.3 region, arr[hg19] 9p24.3(266,045–459,076)×3. The proband exhibits marked expressive and receptive...

As proposed for the emergence of modern languages, we argue that modern uses of languages (pragmatics) also evolved gradually in our species under the effects of human self-domestication, with three key aspects involved in a complex feedback loop: (i) a reduction in reactive aggression, (ii) the sophistication of language structure (with emerging g...

Lay abstract: Autism spectrum disorders and Williams syndrome are complex cognitive conditions exhibiting quite opposite features in the social domain: whereas people with autism spectrum disorders are mostly hyposocial, subjects with Williams syndrome are usually reported as hypersocial. At the same time, autism spectrum disorders and Williams sy...

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and Williams Syndrome (WS) are frequently characterized as mirror conditions in the socio-cognitive domain, with ASD entailing restrictive social interests and with WS exhibiting hypersociability. In this review paper, we examine in detail the strong points and deficits of people with ASD or WS in the socio-cognitive...

Chromosomopathies consist of duplications or deletions of chro- mosomal fragments that usually pro- duce language impairment. However, accurate descriptions of structural and functional linguistic deficits caused by chromosomopaties are not yet available due to the low prevalence of these alter- ations. Our aim in this paper is to put forward a pra...

Deletions and duplications of the distal region of the long arm of chromosome 1 are associated with brain abnormalities and developmental delay. Because duplications are less frequent than deletions, no detailed account of the cognitive profile of the affected people is available, particularly, regarding their language (dis)abilities. In this paper...

We propose that languages (and seemingly our language capabilities) evolved gradually as a result of being engaged in an active feedback loop with human self-domestication. Our proposal primarily builds on the management of aggression: it ties early stages of the evolution of languages with the taming of reactive aggression, whereas it ties late st...

Copy-number variations of the distal region of the short arm of chromosome 9 are associated with learning disabilities and behavioral disturbances. Deletions of the 9p are more frequent than duplications. We report in detail on the cognitive and language features of a child with a duplication in the 9p24.3 region (arr[hg19] 9p24.3(266,045-459,076)x...

Deletions and duplications of the distal region of the long arm of chromosome 1 are associated with brain abnormalities and developmental delay. Because duplications are less frequent than deletions, no detailed account of the cognitive profile of the affected people is available, particularly, regarding their language (dis)abilities. In this paper...

Bipolar disorder (BD) is a severe mental condition characterized by episodes of elevated mood and depression. Being a heritable condition, it features a complex genetic architecture, and it is not still clear how genes contribute to the onset and course of the disease. In this paper we adopted an evolutionary-genomic approach to this condition, foc...

Language is one of the most complex of human traits. There are many hypotheses about how it originated, what factors shaped its diversity, and what ongoing processes drive how it changes. We present the Causal Hypotheses in Evolutionary Linguistics Database (CHIELD, https://chield.excd.org/), a tool for expressing, exploring, and evaluating hypothe...

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and Williams Syndrome (WS) are complex cognitive conditions exhibiting quite opposite features in the social domain: whereas people with ASD are mostly hyposocial, subjects with WS are usually reported as hypersocial. At the same time, ASD and WS share some common underlying behavioral and cognitive deficits. It is n...

Different factors seemingly account for the emergence of present-day languages in our species. Human self-domestication has been recently invoked as one important force favouring language complexity mostly via a cultural mechanism. As a consequence, evolutionary changes impacting on aggression levels are expected to have fostered this process. Here...

The comparative method has enabled us to trace distant phylogenetic relationships among languages and reconstruct extinct languages from the past. Nonetheless, it has limitations, mostly resulting from the circumstance that languages also change by contact with unrelated languages and in response to external factors, particularly, aspects of human...

El presente trabajo aborda el estudio lingüístico de un tipo de cromosomopatía, concretamente, la microduplicación en el cromosoma 1.21q1 (estudio de un caso). Este tipo de alteraciones genéticas son de baja prevalencia, por lo que se desconoce mucho acerca de sus características, y más aún, sobre su influencia en el lenguaje, habilidades comunicat...

Current clinical typologies of language disorders are mostly based on symptomatic criteria. Nonetheless, they often fail to categorize and characterize patients unambiguously, essentially because of the widespread problems of comorbidity and heterogeneity. Likewise, they usually fail to incorporate etiological factors in a distinctive way, particul...

Human self-domestication (i.e., the presence of traits in our species that are commonly found in domesticated animals) has been hypothesized to have contributed to the emergence of many human-specific features, including aspects of our cognition and behavior. Signs of self-domestication have been claimed to be attenuated in individuals with autism...

We propose that human self-domestication favored the emergence of a less aggressive phenotype in our species, more precisely phenotype prone to replace (reactive) physical aggression with verbal aggression. In turn, the (gradual) transition to verbal aggression and to more sophisticated forms of verbal behavior favored self-domestication, with the...

We argue that enhanced play may have contributed to the emergence of complex language systems in modern humans (Homo sapiens). To support this idea, we first discuss evidence for an expansion of playing behavior connected to the extended childhood of modern human children, and the potential of this period for the transmission of complex cultural tr...

Williams syndrome is a complex condition resulting from the heterozygous deletion of nearly 30 genes in chromosome 7. However, precise genotype-to-phenotype mappings are not available for most of its distinctive features. Because WS entails changes in the expression patterns of multiple genes outside the WS region, it can be expected that many othe...

We explore the potential that brain oscillations have for improving our understanding of how language develops, is processed in the brain, and initially evolved in our species. The different synchronization patterns of brain rhythms can account for different perceptual and cognitive functions, and we argue that this includes language. We aim to add...

Human evolution resulted from changes in our biology, behavior, and culture. One source of these changes has been hypothesized to be our self-domestication (that is, the development in humans of features commonly found in domesticated strains of mammals, seemingly as a result of selection for reduced aggression). Signals of domestication, notably b...

low prevalence chromosomopathies; language impairment