Most cited papers in Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
What are the most cited papers in Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation?
The most cited paper in Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation is "The Faculty of Language: What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did It Evolve?" (MARC DAVID HAUSER, Noam Chomsky, W. Tecumseh Fitch, 2002), with 5,242 citations. Next come "Communication and concurrency" (3,977) and "A theory of focus interpretation" (3,203).
Showing 50 of 99 papers. Every paper with more than 863 citations is listed.
| # | Paper | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Faculty of Language: What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did It Evolve? MARC DAVID HAUSER, Noam Chomsky, W. Tecumseh Fitch · Science | 21 Nov 2002 | 5,242 |
| 2 | Communication and concurrency Wojciech Penczek · Science of Computer Programming | May 1990 | 3,977 |
| 3 | A theory of focus interpretation Mats Rooth · Natural Language Semantics | Feb 1992 | 3,203 |
| 4 | Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes Anita M. Pomerantz · Cambridge University Press eBooks | 4 Apr 1985 | 2,904 |
| 5 | Rules and Representations. Terry L. Smith, Noam Chomsky · The Philosophical Review | 1982 | 2,821 |
| 6 | Rethinking Linguistic Relativity Celia Roberts · International Journal of Bilingualism | Sep 1997 | 2,758 |
| 7 | Toward a mechanistic psychology of dialogue Martin John Pickering, Simon Garrod · Behavioral and Brain Sciences | Apr 2004 | 2,692 |
| 8 | The myth of language universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science Nicholas D. Evans, Stephen C. Levinson · Behavioral and Brain Sciences | Oct 2009 | 2,671 |
| 9 | Three Factors in Language Design Noam Chomsky · Linguistic Inquiry | 2005 | 2,659 |
| 10 | The symbol grounding problem Stevan Harnad · Physica D Nonlinear Phenomena | Jun 1990 | 2,630 |
| 11 | Linguistic complexity: locality of syntactic dependencies Edward A. F. Gibson · Cognition | Aug 1998 | 2,562 |
| 12 | The language-as-fixed-effect fallacy: A critique of language statistics in psychological research Herbert H. Clark · Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior | Aug 1973 | 2,279 |
| 13 | The lexical nature of syntactic ambiguity resolution. Maryellen C. MacDonald, Neal J. Pearlmutter, Mark S. Seidenberg · Psychological Review | 1994 | 2,217 |
| 14 | Notes on transitivity and theme in English: Part 2 Μ. Α. Κ. Halliday · Journal of Linguistics | Oct 1967 | 2,102 |
| 15 | Relativized minimality M. Rita Manzini · Lingua | Sep 1991 | 2,079 |
| 16 | The Proper Treatment of Quantification in Ordinary English Richard Montague | 1973 | 2,078 |
| 17 | Articulatory Phonology: An Overview Catherine P. Browman, Louis Goldstein · Phonetica | May 1992 | 2,001 |
| 18 | Information structure in discourse: Towards an integrated formal theory of pragmatics Craige Roberts · Semantics and Pragmatics | 19 Dec 2012 | 1,925 |
| 19 | Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Failure J. THOMAS · Applied Linguistics | Feb 1983 | 1,910 |
| 20 | Ad hoc categories Lawrence W. Barsalou · Memory & Cognition | May 1983 | 1,885 |
| 21 | Reference to Kinds across Language Gennaro Chierchia · Natural Language Semantics | Dec 1998 | 1,832 |
| 22 | Impersonal Passives and the Unaccusative Hypothesis David M. Perlmutter · Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society | 25 Sep 1978 | 1,806 |
| 23 | Constructions: a new theoretical approach to language Adele Eva Goldberg · Trends in Cognitive Sciences | May 2003 | 1,795 |
| 24 | The Structural Sources of Verb Meanings Lila R. Gleitman · Language Acquisition | 1990 | 1,790 |
| 25 | Basic notions of information structure Manfred Krifka · Acta Linguistica Hungarica | 5 Oct 2008 | 1,701 |
| 26 | Monitoring and self-repair in speech Willem J. M. Levelt · Cognition | Jul 1983 | 1,679 |
| 27 | Syntax: Structure, Meaning, and Function Robert D. Van Valin, Randy J. LaPolla | 1997 | 1,630 |
| 28 | Reflexes of grammar in patterns of language change Anthony S. Kroch · Language Variation and Change | Oct 1989 | 1,624 |
| 29 | On derived domains in sentence phonology Elisabeth O. Selkirk · Phonology Yearbook | May 1986 | 1,584 |
| 30 | Regular morphology and the lexicon Joan Bybee · Language and Cognitive Processes | Oct 1995 | 1,542 |
| 31 | Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics Terrence Kaufman · Lingua | Nov 1990 | 1,458 |
| 32 | The social life of cultural value Asif Agha · Language & Communication | 23 Apr 2003 | 1,442 |
| 33 | Hedges: A study in meaning criteria and the logic of fuzzy concepts George P. Lakoff · Journal of Philosophical Logic | Oct 1973 | 1,441 |
| 34 | The faculty of language: what's special about it? Steven A. Pinker, Ray S. Jackendoff · Cognition | 25 Jan 2005 | 1,437 |
| 35 | The sausage machine: A new two-stage parsing model Lyn Frazier, Janet Dean Fodor · Cognition | 1978 | 1,421 |
| 36 | QUESTIONS IN MONTAGUE ENGLISH C. L. Hamblin · Elsevier eBooks | 1976 | 1,399 |
| 37 | Relevance: Communication and Cognition Ralph C. S. Walker · Mind & Language | Mar 1989 | 1,388 |
| 38 | The Acquisition of Performatives Prior to Speech. Elizabeth A. Bates · Merrill-palmer Quarterly | Jul 1975 | 1,372 |
| 39 | Movement Operations after Syntax David Embick, Rolf Noyer · Linguistic Inquiry | Oct 2001 | 1,349 |
| 40 | FRAME SEMANTICS AND THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE* Charles J. Fillmore · Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences | Oct 1976 | 1,334 |
| 41 | Vagueness and grammar: the semantics of relative and absolute gradable adjectives Christopher B. Kennedy · Linguistics and Philosophy | 19 Mar 2007 | 1,321 |
| 42 | Bilingual Language Switching in Naming: Asymmetrical Costs of Language Selection Renata F. I. Meuter, Alan Allport · Journal of Memory and Language | 1999 | 1,314 |
| 43 | Pragmatics, Modularity and Mind‐reading Dan Sperber, Deirdre Wilson · Mind & Language | 2002 | 1,305 |
| 44 | Problems of projection Noam Chomsky · Lingua | 6 Jan 2013 | 1,280 |
| 45 | Regularity in semantic change Elizabeth Closs Traugott, Richard B. Dasher · Cognitive linguistic studies in cultural contexts | 2 Jan 2024 | 1,273 |
| 46 | Fragments and ellipsis Jason Merchant · Linguistics and Philosophy | 2005 | 1,271 |
| 47 | Scale Structure, Degree Modification, and the Semantics of Gradable Predicates Christopher B. Kennedy, Louise McNally · Language | Jun 2005 | 1,257 |
| 48 | Language typology and syntactic description Maria Koptjevskaja‐Tamm, Henrik Liljegren · Linguistic Typology | 15 Jun 2013 | 1,248 |
| 49 | Using uh and um in spontaneous speaking Herbert H. Clark · Cognition | May 2002 | 1,240 |
| 50 | We Acquire Vocabulary and Spelling by Reading: Additional Evidence for the Input Hypothesis Stephen D. Krashen · Modern Language Journal | Dec 1989 | 1,195 |
Citations are OpenAlex's own counts, from its 2026-09-23 snapshot, so the ranking can differ from Google Scholar or Web of Science. A paper is listed for a field when OpenAlex files it under one of the field's topics; retracted papers and papers whose citation count cannot be traced to citing works are left out, and a preprint and the article it became are shown once. Release dates are OpenAlex's: where a source gave only a month or a year, that is what is shown. How the lists are chosen.