Chimpanzees combine pant hoots with food calls into larger structures

• DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2021.06.026
• Publication Date: 2021-07-21T09:04:15Z
• Authors: Maël Leroux; Alexandra B. Boss...; Bosco Chandia; Andri Manser; Klaus Zuberbühler; Simon W. Townsend
• Keywords: 0301 basic medicine; 570; BF Psychology; Evolution of language; Evolution; NDAS; BF; 410 Linguistics; 03 medical and health sciences; Behavior and Systematics; Nonhuman primate; Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii; Syntax; QL; Ecology; QL Zoology; EVOL NCCR Evolving Language; 1105 Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics; 10104 Department of Comparative Language Science; Call combination; 490 Other languages; Great ape; ISLE Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution; Animal Science and Zoology; 890 Other literatures; 1103 Animal Science and Zoology

A growing body of observational and experimental data in nonhuman primates has highlighted the presence rudimentary call combinations within vocal communication system monkeys.Such evidence suggests ability to combine meaning-bearing units into larger structures, a key feature language also known as syntax, could have its origins rooted primate lineage.However, evolutionary progression this trait remains ambiguous for similar great apes, our closest-living relatives, is sparse incomplete.In study, we aimed bridge gap by analysing combinatorial properties pant hoot-food combination relative, chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes.To systematically investigate syntactic-like potential structure, adopted three levels analysis.First, applied collocation analyses, methods traditionally used sciences, confirm hoots with food calls was not random co-occurrence, but instead consistently produced structure.Second, using acoustic confirmed comprising were acoustically indistinguishable from same isolation, indicating composed individually occurring units, criterion linguistic syntax.Finally, investigated context-specific nature demonstrating that more likely be when feeding on patches high-ranking individual joined party.Together results converge provide support systematic chimpanzees.We highlight playback experiments are vital robustly disentangle both function might serve similarities (i.e.syntax) language.