The implications of chimpanzee call combinations for the origins of language
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The origins of language
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (May 9, 2025)
Summary:
Wild chimpanzees alter the meaning of single calls when embedding them into diverse call combinations, mirroring linguistic operations in human language. Human language, however, allows an infinite generation of meaning by combining phonemes into words and words into sentences. This contrasts with the very few meaningful combinations reported in animals, leaving the mystery of human language evolution unresolved.
Discussing:
Cédric Girard-Buttoz, Christof Neumann, Tatiana Bortolato, Emiliano Zaccarella, Angela D. Friederici, Roman M. Wittig, Catherine Crockford. Versatile use of chimpanzee call combinations promotes meaning expansion. Science Advances (5/9/25); 11 (19) DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adq2879
Abstract:
Language is a combinatorial communication system able to generate an infinite number of meanings. Nonhuman animals use several combinatorial mechanisms to expand meanings, but maximum one mechanism is reported per species, suggesting an evolutionary leap to human language. We tested whether chimpanzees use several meaning-expanding mechanisms. We recorded 4323 utterances in 53 wild chimpanzees and compared the events in which chimpanzees emitted two-call vocal combinations (bigrams) with those eliciting the component calls. Examining 16 bigrams, we found four combinatorial mechanisms whereby bigram meanings were or were not derived from the meaning of their parts—compositional or noncompositional combinations, respectively. Chimpanzees used each mechanism in several bigrams across a wide range of daily events. This combinatorial system allows encoding many more meanings than there are call types. Such a system in nonhuman animals has never been documented and may be transitional between rudimentary systems and open-ended systems like human language.
A far cry from the calls of Dr. Dolittle's garrulous animals.
Selected readings
- "'Chimps have tons to say but can't say it'" (1/11/10)
- "Nim: the unproject" (8/16/11)
- "Seidenberg on Singer and Nim" *8/27/11)
- "Annals of animal communication" (10/20/10)
- "Chicken or egg; grammar or language" (1/16/25)
[h.t. Ted McClure]