@article {308555,
	title = {The precedence of syntax in the rapid emergence of human language in evolution as defined by the integration hypothesis.},
	journal = {Front Psychol},
	volume = {6},
	year = {2015},
	note = {<p>http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00271/abstract</p>
},
	month = {2015},
	pages = {271},
	abstract = {<p>Our core hypothesis is that the emergence of human language arose very rapidly from the linking of two pre-adapted systems found elsewhere in the animal world-an expression system, found, for example, in birdsong, and a lexical system, suggestively found in non-human primate calls (Miyagawa et al., 2013, 2014). We challenge the view that language has undergone a series of gradual changes-or a single preliminary protolinguistic stage-before achieving its full character. We argue that a full-fledged combinatorial operation Merge triggered the integration of these two pre-adapted systems, giving rise to a fully developed language. This goes against the gradualist view that there existed a structureless, protolinguistic stage, in which a rudimentary proto-Merge operation generated internally flat words. It is argued that compounds in present-day language are a fossilized form of this prior stage, a point which we will question.</p>
},
	issn = {1664-1078},
	doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00271},
	url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25852595},
	author = {N{\'o}brega, Vitor A and Miyagawa, Shigeru}
}
