Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T07:29:35.908Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Evolutionary linguistics can help refine (and test) hypotheses about how music might have evolved

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 September 2021

Antonio Benítez-Burraco Open the ORCID record for Antonio Benítez-Burraco [Opens in a new window]
Antonio Benítez-Burraco*
Affiliation:
Department of Spanish, Linguistics, and Theory of Literature (Linguistics), Faculty of Philology, University of Seville, 41004-Seville, Spain. [email protected]://antoniobenitez.wix.com/benitez-burraco
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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 our self-domestication.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 44 , 2021 , e64
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Benítez-Burraco, A. (2017). Grammaticalization and language evolution: Focusing the debate. Language Sciences, 63, 60–68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2017.03.003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benítez-Burraco, A., Chekalin, E., Bruskin, S., Tatarinova, T., & Morozova, I. (in press). Recent selection of candidate genes for domestication in Europeans and language change in Europe: A hypothesis. Annals of Human Biology.Google Scholar
Benítez-Burraco, A., & Kempe, V. (2018). The emergence of modern languages: Has human self-domestication optimized language transmission?. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 551. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00551.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Benítez-Burraco, A., & Progovac, L. (2020). A four-stage model for language evolution under the effects of human self-domestication. Language & Communication, 73, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2020.03.002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bolender, J. (2007). Prehistoric cognition by description: A Russellian approach to the upper Paleolithic. Biology & Philosophy, 22, 383–399.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chekalin, E., Rubanovich, A., Tatarinova, T. V., Kasianov, A., Bender, N., Chekalina, M., … Morozova, I. (2019). Changes in biological pathways during 6,000 years of civilization in Europe. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 36(1), 127–140. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msy201.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hare, B. (2017). Survival of the friendliest: Homo sapiens evolved via selection for prosociality. Annual Review of Psychology, 68, 155–186. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010416-044201.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hare, B., Wobber, V., & Wrangham, R. (2012). The self-domestication hypothesis: Evolution of bonobo psychology is due to selection against aggression. Animal Behaviour, 83(3), 573–585. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2011.12.007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Komiyama, T., Iwama, H., Osada, N., Nakamura, Y., Kobayashi, H., Tateno, Y., & Gojobori, T. (2014). Dopamine receptor genes and evolutionary differentiation in the domestication of fighting cocks and long-crowing chickens. PLoS ONE, 9(7), e101778. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0101778.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Langley, M. C., Benítez-Burraco, A., & Kempe, V. (2020). Playing with language, creating complexity: Has play contributed to the evolution of complex language? Evolutionary Anthropology, 29(1), 29–40. https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.21810.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lupyan, G., & Dale, R. (2010). Language structure is partly determined by social structure. PLoS ONE, 5(1), e8559. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0008559.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McDermott, J. H., Schultz, A. F., Undurraga, E. A., & Godoy, R. A. (2016). Indifference to dissonance in native Amazonians reveals cultural variation in music perception. Nature, 535(7613), 547–550. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature18635.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nettle, D. (2012). Social scale and structural complexity in human languages. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 367(1597), 1829–1836. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2011.0216.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pisor, A. C., & Surbeck, M. (2019). The evolution of intergroup tolerance in nonhuman primates and humans. Evolutionary Anthropology, 28(4), 210–223. https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.21793.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Progovac, L., & Benítez-Burraco, A. (2019). From physical aggression to verbal behavior: Language evolution and self-domestication feedback loop. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 2807. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02807.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sato, D. X., Rafati, N., Ring, H., Younis, S., Feng, C., Blanco-Aguiar, J. A., … Andersson, L. (2020). Brain transcriptomics of wild and domestic rabbits suggests that changes in dopamine signalling and ciliary function contributed to evolution of tameness. Genome Biology and Evolution, 12(10), 1918–1928. https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaa158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trudgill, P. (2011). Sociolinguistic typology: Social determinants of linguistic complexity. Oxford university Press.Google Scholar
Wray, A., & Grace, G. W. (2007). The consequences of talking to strangers: Evolutionary corollaries of socio-cultural influences on linguistic form. Lingua. International Review of General Linguistics. Revue Internationale De Linguistique Generale, 117, 543–578.Google Scholar