To me it still sounds like physically linked sticks would have been helpful here, if the fundamental problem was that the pilots did not understand the situatio

To me it still sounds like physically linked sticks would have been helpful here, if the fundamental problem was that the pilots did not understand the situation. At 11:38, when this first "fighting over the stick" episode happened, Bonin held his stick fully back to the nose-up limit stop, and Robert was not aware of that fact. If the sticks had been linked, he would presumably have noticed it, which might have helped him make sense of the stall warning etc. I guess it's still a bit of random luck that he actually took the controls for a moment here. Like you say, this was already at a late stage.