Evolutionary Linguistic Theory

Main information
Editor
ORCID logoErmenegildo Bidese | University of Trento | evlinth1 at gmail.com

This journal is peer reviewed and indexed in: Dimensions

Evolutionary Linguistic Theory (ELT) is an international peer-reviewed journal intended as a platform for discussing the question of the origin and development of the language faculty understood as a specifically dedicated part of the human mind/brain and its connection with the human cognition. The specificity of the journal is to contribute to the ongoing debate on language origin from an explicitly linguistic viewpoint which examines its complex subject from a well-grounded knowledge in theoretical linguistics (with its subsystems, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, language acquisition and language change, historical linguistics and philosophy of language), and reaching out into the contiguous scientific disciplines, as psychology, philosophy and cognitive neuroscience.

In the following we give a not exhaustive list of matters ELT is concerned with:

  • The design of the language faculty
  • The role of the lexicon in the architecture of the language faculty
  • The role of categorization and features for the origin of language
  • The question of protolanguage
  • Language and thought
  • Language, music and action from an evolutionary perspective
  • Language and other cognitive domains like vision and spatiality from an evolutionary perspective
  • The connection between the internal reality molded by language and the external world
  • Language and the origin of consciousness and subjectness
  • Language and shared intentionality
  • Historical perspectives on the question about the origin of language
ISSN: 2589-1588 | E-ISSN: 2589-1596
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/elt
Latest articles
IssuesOnline-first articles

Volume 6 (2024)

Volume 5 (2023)

Volume 4 (2022)

Volume 3 (2021)

Volume 2 (2020)

Volume 1 (2019)

Board
Editorial Board
Stefano F. Cappa | University School for Advanced Studies IUSS, Pavia
ORCID logoLivio Gaeta | University of Turin
Giorgio Graffi | University of Verona
Wolfram Hinzen | ICREA7/Universitat Pompeu Fabra/FIDMAG
Elisabeth Leiss | Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich
ORCID logoMaria Rita Manzini | University of Florence
ORCID logoAndrea Moro | University School for Advanced Studies IUSS, Pavia
Andrea Padovan | University of Verona
ORCID logoMichael T. Putnam | The Pennsylvania State University
Daniela Sammler | Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
Guido Seiler | University of Zurich
Alessandra Tomaselli | University of Verona
ORCID logoAndreas Trotzke | University of Konstanz
Subscription Info
Current issue: 5:2, available as of March 2024
Next issue: 6:1/2, expected March 2025

General information about our electronic journals.

Subscription rates

All prices for print + online include postage/handling.

Online-only Print + online
Volume 7 (2025): 2 issues; ca. 200 pp. EUR 162.00 EUR 207.00
Volume 6 (2024): 2 issues; ca. 200 pp. EUR 157.00 EUR 188.00

Individuals may apply for a special online-only subscription rate of EUR 55.00 per volume.
Private subscriptions are for personal use only, and must be pre-paid and ordered directly from the publisher.

Available back-volumes

Online-only Print + online
Complete backset
(Vols. 1‒5; 2019‒2023)
10 issues;
1,000 pp.
EUR 757.00 EUR 840.00
Volume 5 (2023) 2 issues; 200 pp. EUR 152.00 EUR 171.00
Volumes 2‒4 (2020‒2022) 2 issues; avg. 200 pp. EUR 152.00 per volume EUR 168.00 per volume
Volume 1 (2019) 2 issues; 200 pp. EUR 149.00 EUR 165.00
Guidelines

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES FOR CONTRIBUTORS

General

For the benefit of production efficiency, the publisher and the editor ask you to follow the following submission guidelines strictly. Papers that do not follow these guidelines will be returned to the author.

Contributions should be consistent in their use of language and spelling. If you are not a native speaker of English it is advised to have your text checked by a native speaker.

When submitting the final manuscript to the journal, please include: a one-paragraph abstract, approximately five keywords, and a current mailing address.   

Electronic files

Files. Contributions should not exceed 10,000 words. They should be in English following the American Psychological Association (APA) style.

Please take care that you supply all the files, text as well as graphic files, used in the creation of the manuscript, and be sure to submit the final version of the manuscript. And please delete any personal comments so that these will not mistakenly be typeset and check that all files are readable.

File naming conventions. When naming your file please use the following convention:  use the first three characters of the first author’s last name; if that name is Johnson, the file should be named JOH.DOC, JOH.WP5, etc. Do not use the threecharacter extension for things other than the identification of the file type (not JOH.ART, JOH.REV). Figures can be named as follows JOH1.EPS, JOH2.TIF, JOH3.XLS, etc.

Software. Word (PC/Mac) is preferred. If you intend to use other word processing software, please contact the editors first.

Graphic files: Please supply figures as Encapsulated Postscript (EPS) or Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) conversion in addition to the original creation files.

Lay-out

In order to facilitate smooth production, it is important that you follow the journal’s style for consistency.

Do not add running heads. Formatting that should be supplied by you is the formatting of references (see below) and font enhancements (such as italics, boldface, caps, small caps, etc.) in the text.

Whatever formatting or style conventions are employed, please be consistent.

Tables and figures. All tables, trees and figures must fit within the following page size (if necessary, after – limited – reduction) and should still be legible at this size:

11.5 cm (4.52”) x 19 cm  (7.48”).

Suggested font setting for tables: Times Roman 10 pts (absolute minimum: 8 pts).

Tables and figures should be numbered consecutively, provided with appropriate captions and should be referred to in the main text in this manner, e.g., “in table 2”, but never like this “in the following table:”. Please indicate the preferred position of the table or figure in the text.

Running heads.  Please do not include running heads with your article. However, in case of a long title please suggest a short one for the running head (max. 55 characters) on the cover sheet of your contribution. 

Emphasis and foreign words. Use italics for words in languages other than English as well as for foreign language, highlighting and emphasis. Boldface should be used only for highlighting within italicized stretches and for headings. Please refrain from the use of FULL CAPS (except for focal stress and abbreviations) and underlining (except for highlighting within examples, as an alternative for boldface), unless this is a strict convention in your field of research. For terms or expressions (e.g., ‘context of situation’) please use single quotes. For glosses of citation forms, use double quotes.

Transliteration. Please transliterate into English any examples from languages that use a non-Latin script, using the appropriate transliteration system (ISO or LOC).

Symbols and special characters. In case you have no access to certain characters, we advise you to use a clear convention to mark these characters. You can use our font table (Appendix A) or any other regular table to list the correspondences between your symbols and the required ones. If you use any phonetic characters, please mark these by the use of a character style if possible. This will enable us to retrieve those characters in your document.

Sections and headings. Articles should be reasonably divided into sections and, if necessary, into sub-sections. If you cannot use the electronic styles, please mark the headings as follows:

Level 1        =   bold italics, 1 line space before, section number flush left. Text immediately below.

Level 2        =   italics, 1 line space before, section number flush left. Text immediately below.

Level 3ff      =   italics, 1 line space before, section number flush left. Heading ends with a full stop, with the text following on the same line.

Numbering should be in Arabic numerals; no italics; no dot after the last number, except for level 1 headings.

Quotations: In-text quotations should be given in double quotation marks. Quotations longer than 3 lines should be indented left and right, without quotation marks and with the appropriate reference to the source. They should be set off from the main text by a line of space above and below.

Listings: Should not be indented. If numbered, please number as follows:

1. ..................... or a. .......................

2. ..................... or b. .......................

Listings that run on with the main text can be numbered in parentheses: (1).............., (2)............., etc.

Examples and glosses

Examples should be numbered with Arabic numerals (1,2,3, etc.) in parentheses.

Examples in languages other than English should be in italics with an approximate translation. Between the original and the translation lines, a line with glosses (and in cases of more ‘exotic’ languages, a line containing a morphemic breakdown) can be added. This interlinear gloss gets no punctuation and no highlighting. For the abbreviations in the interlinear gloss, CAPS or small caps can be used, which will be converted to small caps by our typesetters in final formatting.

Please note that lines 1 and 2 are lined up through the use of spaces: it is essential that the number of elements in lines 1 and 2 match. If two words in the example correspond to one word in the gloss use a full stop to glue the two together (2a). Morphemes are separated by hyphens (1, 2b).

Every next level in the example gets one indent/tab.

              (1)         Kare wa    besutoseraa  o          takusan kaite-iru.
                            he     TOP best-seller     ACC    many     write-PERF    
                            “He has written many best-sellers.’”                              

              (2)         a.           Jan houdt.van Marie.
                                         Jan loves         Marie
                                         “Jan loves Marie.”

                           b.           Ed en   Floor   gaan samen-wonen.
                                          Ed and Floor   go      together-live.INF
                                         “Ed and Floor are going to live together.”

Notes

Notes should be kept to a minimum and should be submitted as numbered footnotes.
***Note: footnote indicators in the text should appear at the end of sentences and follow punctuation marks.

References

It is essential that the references are formatted to the specifications given in these guidelines, as these cannot be formatted automatically. Please use the reference style as described in The APA Publication Manual (6th ed.).

References in the text: These should be as precise as possible, giving page references where necessary; for example (Clahsen, 1991, p. 252) or: as in Brown et al. (1991, p. 252). All references in the text should appear in the references section.

References section: References should be listed first alphabetically and then chronologically. The section should include all (and only!) references that are actually mentioned in the text.

Authors/contributors are encouraged to supply – with a reference, not instead of – the DOI if they happen to have that information readily available.

Examples

Book:
Görlach, M. (2003). English words abroad. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Spear,  N. E., & Miller, R. R. (Eds.). (1981). Information processing in animals: Memory mechanisms. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Article (in book):
Adams, C. A., & Dickinson, A. (1981). Actions and habits: Variation in associative representation during instrumental learning. In N. E. Spear & R. R. Miller (Eds.), Information processing in animals: Memory mechanisms (pp. 143-186). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Article (in journal):
Claes, J., & Ortiz López, L. A. (2011). Restricciones pragmáticas y sociales en la expresión de futuridad en el español de Puerto Rico [Pragmatic and social restrictions in the expression of the future in Puerto Rican Spanish]. Spanish in Context, 8, 50–72.

Rayson, P., Leech, G. N., & Hodges, M. (1997). Social differentiation in the use of English vocabulary: Some analyses of the conversational component of the British National Corpus. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 2(1), 120–132.

Additional Style Guidance

Please use in-text citations, numbered footnotes, and works cited.

1.  Please do not justify the right margin of your manuscript.  Leave a ragged right margin.

2.  Please double space everything, including quotations and footnotes.

3.  Please use American or British spellings throughout.

4.  Section headers, if used, should simply be phrases with no numbers. Please restrict headers to three or four per essay.  They may be italicized.

5.  Miscellaneous

Appendixes

Possible appendixes should follow the References section.

Author’s Submission Checklist

When submitting the revised version of your accepted manuscript, in addition to following the guidelines above, please be sure that you also include:

 

Submission

Authors are invited to submit their contribution through the journal’s online submission and manuscript tracking site. Please consult the guidelines and the Short Guide to EM for Authors before you submit your paper.

If you are not able to submit online, or for any other editorial correspondence, please contact the editors by e-mail: evlinth1 at gmail.com

Articles under consideration are double-blind peer-reviewed and decisions on all published content are made by the editors.

Articles under consideration are double-blind peer-reviewed and decisions on all published content are made by the editors.

Ethics

John Benjamins journals are committed to maintaining the highest standards of publication ethics and to supporting ethical research practices.

Authors and reviewers are kindly requested to read this Ethics Statement .

Please also note the guidance on the use of (generative) AI in the statement.

Rights and Permissions

Authors must ensure that they have permission to use any third-party material in their contribution; the permission should include perpetual (not time-limited) world-wide distribution in print and electronic format.

For information on authors' rights, please consult the rights information page.

Open Access

Articles accepted for this journal can be made Open Access through payment of an Article Publication Charge (APC) of EUR 1800 (excl. tax). To arrange this, please contact openaccess at benjamins.nl once your paper has been accepted for publication. More information can be found on the publisher's Open Access Policy page.

Corresponding authors from institutions with which John Benjamins has a Read & Publish arrangement can publish Open Access without paying a fee. Please consult this list of institutions for up-to-date information on which articles qualify.

For information about permission to post a version of your article online or in an institutional repository ('green' open access or self-archiving), please consult the rights information page.

If the article is not (to be made) Open Access, there is no fee for the author to publish in this journal.

Archiving

John Benjamins Publishing Company has an agreement in place with Portico for the archiving of all its online journals and e-books.

Subjects

Main BIC Subject

CF: Linguistics

Main BISAC Subject

LAN008000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Journalism