The Frame/Content theory deals with how and why the first language evolved the present-day speech mode of programming syllable “Frame” structures with segmental (consonant and vowel) “Content” elements. The first words are considered, for biomechanical reasons, to have had the simple syllable frame structures of pre-speech babbling (e.g., “bababa”), and were perhaps parental terms, generated within the parent–infant dyad. Although all gestural origins theories (including Arbib’s theory reviewed here) have iconicity as a plausible alternative hypothesis for the origin of the meaning-signal link for words, they all share the problems of how and why a fully fledged sign language, necessarily involving a structured phonology, changed to a spoken language.
Arnon, Inbal, Liran Carmel, Nicolas Claidière, W. Tecumseh Fitch, Susan Goldin-Meadow, Simon Kirby, Kazuo Okanoya, Limor Raviv, Lucie Wolters & Simon E. Fisher
2025. What enables human language? A biocultural framework. Science 390:6775
Davis, Barbara L., Katsura Aoyama, K. Vest & Leigh A. Loewenstein
2025.
Mom
,
Dad
, and
Ball:
Manner of Articulation Sequences Within Children's Consonant–Vowel–Consonant Words
. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 68:10 ► pp. 4688 ff.
Bart Geurts & Richard Moore
2025. Evolutionary Pragmatics,
Arbib, Michael A., Dorothy M. Fragaszy, Susan D. Healy & Dietrich Stout
2023. Tooling and Construction: From Nut-Cracking and Stone-Tool Making to Bird Nests and Language. Current Research in Behavioral Sciences 5 ► pp. 100121 ff.
Enfield, N. J.
2023. Scale in Language. Cognitive Science 47:10
Iwasaki, Shin-ichi, Ken Yoshimura, Tomoichiro Asami & Serkan Erdoğan
2022. Comparative morphology and physiology of the vocal production apparatus and the brain in the extant primates. Annals of Anatomy - Anatomischer Anzeiger 240 ► pp. 151887 ff.
Brown, Steven, Emma Mittermaier, Tanishka Kher & Paul Arnold
2019. How Pantomime Works: Implications for Theories of Language Origin. Frontiers in Communication 4
Fitch, W. Tecumseh
2019. Sequence and hierarchy in vocal rhythms and phonology. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1453:1 ► pp. 29 ff.
Brown, Steven & Ye Yuan
2018. Broca’s area is jointly activated during speech and gesture production. NeuroReport 29:14 ► pp. 1214 ff.
Stevens, Larry & Jasmine Benjamin
2018. The Brain that Longs to Care for Others: The Current Neuroscience of Compassion. In The Neuroscience of Empathy, Compassion, and Self-Compassion, ► pp. 53 ff.
Szewczyk, Jakub M., Marta Marecka, Shula Chiat & Zofia Wodniecka
2018. Nonword repetition depends on the frequency of sublexical representations at different grain sizes: Evidence from a multi-factorial analysis. Cognition 179 ► pp. 23 ff.
Woodruff, C. Chad & Larry Stevens
2018. Where Caring for Self and Others Lives in the Brain, and How It Can Be Enhanced and Diminished: Observations on the Neuroscience of Empathy, Compassion, and Self-Compassion. In The Neuroscience of Empathy, Compassion, and Self-Compassion, ► pp. 285 ff.
Yuan, Ye, Judy Major-Girardin & Steven Brown
2018. Storytelling Is Intrinsically Mentalistic: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study of Narrative Production across Modalities. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 30:9 ► pp. 1298 ff.
Belyk, Michel & Steven Brown
2017. The origins of the vocal brain in humans. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 77 ► pp. 177 ff.
Brown, Steven
2017. Proto-Acting as a New Concept: Personal Mimicry and the Origins of Role Playing. Humanities 6:2 ► pp. 43 ff.
Brown, Steven
2017. A Joint Prosodic Origin of Language and Music. Frontiers in Psychology 8
Arbib, Michael A., Brad Gasser & Victor Barrès
2014. Language is handy but is it embodied?. Neuropsychologia 55 ► pp. 57 ff.
Berent, Iris, Hong Pan, Xu Zhao, Jane Epstein, Monica L. Bennett, Vibhas Deshpande, Ravi Teja Seethamraju, Emily Stern & Robert C. Berwick
2014. Language Universals Engage Broca's Area. PLoS ONE 9:4 ► pp. e95155 ff.
Fitch, W. Tecumseh & Mauricio D. Martins
2014. Hierarchical processing in music, language, and action: Lashley revisited. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1316:1 ► pp. 87 ff.
Michel, George F., Iryna Babik, Eliza L. Nelson, Julie M. Campbell & Emily C. Marcinowski
2013. How the development of handedness could contribute to the development of language. Developmental Psychobiology 55:6 ► pp. 608 ff.
Moulin-Frier, Clément & Michael A. Arbib
2013. Recognizing speech in a novel accent: the motor theory of speech perception reframed. Biological Cybernetics 107:4 ► pp. 421 ff.
Weismer, Gary
2013. Speech Science: Technique, Concept, Theory. Perspectives on Speech Science and Orofacial Disorders 23:1 ► pp. 6 ff.
Schwartz, Jean-Luc & Hélène Lœvenbruck
2012. Chapitre 5. La parole, entre objets vocaux et objets du monde. In La psychologie cognitive, ► pp. 165 ff.
Sandler, Wendy, Mark Aronoff, Irit Meir & Carol Padden
2011. The gradual emergence of phonological form in a new language. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 29:2 ► pp. 503 ff.
Corballis, Michael C.
2010. The gestural origins of language. WIREs Cognitive Science 1:1 ► pp. 2 ff.
Arbib, Michael
2006. Aphasia, apraxia and the evolution of the language-ready brain. Aphasiology 20:9 ► pp. 1125 ff.
Arbib, Michael
2006. Broca’s Area in System Perspective: Language in the Context of Action-Oriented Perception. In Broca's Region, ► pp. 153 ff.
2006. The role of vocal tract gestural action units in understanding the evolution of phonology. In Action to Language via the Mirror Neuron System, ► pp. 215 ff.
Arbib, Michael A.
2005. The mirror system hypothesis stands but the framework is much enriched. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28:2 ► pp. 149 ff.
Arbib, Michael A.
2006. The Mirror System Hypothesis on the linkage of action and languages. In Action to Language via the Mirror Neuron System, ► pp. 3 ff.
Arbib, Michael A.
2006. A Sentence is to Speech as What is to Action?. Cortex 42:4 ► pp. 507 ff.
Arbib, Michael A.
2008. From grasp to language: Embodied concepts and the challenge of abstraction. Journal of Physiology-Paris 102:1-3 ► pp. 4 ff.
Arbib, Michael A.
2011. From Mirror Neurons to Complex Imitation in the Evolution of Language and Tool Use. Annual Review of Anthropology 40:1 ► pp. 257 ff.
Arbib, Michael A.
2017. Dorsal and ventral streams in the evolution of the language-ready brain: Linking language to the world. Journal of Neurolinguistics 43 ► pp. 228 ff.
Arbib, Michael A.
2015. Language Evolution. In The Handbook of Language Emergence, ► pp. 600 ff.
[no author supplied]
2007. Present Status of the Postural Origins Theory. In The Evolution of Hemispheric Specialization in Primates [Special Topics in Primatology, 5], ► pp. 58 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 march 2026. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
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