Homo loquens, homo ridens. Interrelazioni tra risata e linguaggio.

The present review aims to conduct a comparative investigation between the two systems of laughter and language by integrating the tools of psycholinguistics, neuroscience, and anthropology. This analysis reveals that the phenomenon of laughter, often dismissed as a trivial paralinguistic fact, actually shares many constitutive traits with the linguistic faculty. This evidence supports the hypothesis - as original as neglected - that the relationship between laughter and language cannot be ascribed to a mere coexistence of mutually autonomous phenomena, but rather to an actual interdependence, with high degrees of coordination. The observed similarities on a synchronic level legitimize the exploration of a paradigm of co-genesis and long-lasting co-evolution of language and laughter in the development of the human species.