Thank you for visiting! I am a linguist with research interests and publications in syntax, Slavic syntax, evolution of syntax, and human evolution more generally. My research focus in the past sixteen years has been understanding how and why human language evolved, and how its gradual evolution contributed to human cognitive evolution. My findings lead to the conclusion that syntax/grammar evolved gradually (starting with a simple stage), and that this stage is not only still evident in various modern language constructions (proxies/‘living fossils’), but that it also provides a scaffolding/foundation for building more complex syntactic/grammatical structures, as well as serves as a common denominator for variation across languages. Identifying these proxies of early language has provided the necessary detail not only for testing the predictions of this proposal in e.g. fMRI experiments, but also for cross-fertilizing these findings with the biological theories of human evolution, including natural and sexual selection, as well as human self-domestication.
My most thorough and comprehensive arguments for the gradual evolution of grammar/language, subject to natural/sexual selection, can be found in the two books on the topic: Evolutionary Syntax (2015), Oxford University Press, and A Critical Introduction to Language Evolution (2019 e-book, Springer Expert Briefs). The most succinct proposal (which gives a fragment of early human and Neanderthal grammars) can be found in my 2016 article A gradualist scenario for language evolution: A precise reconstruction. Here and here you can find two co-authored 2018 articles offering results of fMRI experiments testing some predictions of this proposal.
My thinking regarding how language/grammar helped shape human cognition can be found in this joint paper. In a series of co-authored articles, starting with an article published in 2019, and continuing with the 2021 article in Philosophical Transactions of Royal Society B, we cross-fertilized my findings regarding the earliest stages of grammar with the recent proposal that human evolution involved self-domestication, characterized by a gradual reduction in reactive aggression during human evolution. The finding is that the proxies of early grammars across different languages and cultures typically involve playful but derogatory naming/nicknaming, that is, verbal aggression, providing a means for humans to replace physical aggression with verbal and cognitive contest. My latest paper and presentation for the 2024 EvoLang conference in Madison, gives a name to this approach: The Survival of the Wittiest (not Friendliest).
My CV section lists the rest of the publications.
I would be grateful for any feedback at progovacATwayneDOTedu.
