| 1990 | - | Natural language and natural selection - Pinker | :: | 79 |
| 1994 | - | The Language instinct: How the Mind Creates Language - Pinker | :: | 60 |
| 1998 | - | The origins of syntax in visually grounded robotic agents - Steels | :: | 41 |
| 2002 | - | Learning, bottlenecks and the evolution of recursive syntax - Kirby | :: | 40 |
| 1999 | - | Function, selection and innateness: the emergence of language universals - Kirby | :: | 40 |
| 1965 | - | Aspects of the Theory of Syntax - Chomsky | :: | 36 |
| 2001 | - | Spontaneous evolution of linguistic structure: an iterated learning model of the emergence of regularity and irregularity - Kirby | :: | 35 |
| 2002 | - | The negotiation and acquisition of recursive grammars as a result of competition among exemplars - Batali | :: | 34 |
| 1980 | - | Rules and Representations - Chomsky | :: | 33 |
| 1997 | - | Constructing and sharing perceptual distinctions - Steels | :: | 24 |
| 2002 | - | Compositional syntax from cultural transmission - Brighton | :: | 22 |
| 2001 | - | Establishing communication systems without explicit meaning transmission - Smith | :: | 17 |
| 2002 | - | The cultural evolution of communication in a population of neural networks - Smith | :: | 17 |
| 1995 | - | The Minimalist Program - Chomsky | :: | 15 |
| 2002 | - | Crucial factors in the origins of word-meaning - Steels | :: | 15 |
| 2000 | - | How Children Learn the Meanings of Words - Bloom | :: | 14 |
| 1990 | - | Nativist and functional explanations in language acquisition - Hurford | :: | 13 |
| 1992 | - | Complexity and complex adaptive systems - Gell-Mann | :: | 8 |
| 1990 | - | A parsing theory of word order universals - Hawkins | :: | 7 |
| 1999 | - | Language learning from fragmentary input - Hurford | :: | 6 |
| 1975 | - | Reections on Language - Chomsky | :: | 6 |
| 1991 | - | Infants' contribution to the achievement of joint reference - Baldwin | :: | 5 |
| 1998 | - | Dynamics of internal and global structure through linguistic interactions - Hashimoto | :: | 5 |
| 1994 | - | Stability, instability and chaos: an introduction to the theory of nonlinear differential equations - Glendinning | :: | 4 |
| 1989 | - | Evolution, selection and cognition: From "learning" to parameter setting in biology and in the study of language - Piattelli-Palmarini | :: | 2 |