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Chimpanzees show the capacity to communicate about concomitant daily life events

One universal feature of human language is its versatility in communicating about juxtapositions of everyday events. Versatile combinatorial systems of communication can be selected for if (a) several vocal units are flexibly combined into numerous and long vocal sequences and (b) vocal sequences re...

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Autores principales: Bortolato, Tatiana, Friederici, Angela D., Girard-Buttoz, Cédric, Wittig, Roman M., Crockford, Catherine
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10590744/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37876805
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2023.108090
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author Bortolato, Tatiana
Friederici, Angela D.
Girard-Buttoz, Cédric
Wittig, Roman M.
Crockford, Catherine
author_facet Bortolato, Tatiana
Friederici, Angela D.
Girard-Buttoz, Cédric
Wittig, Roman M.
Crockford, Catherine
author_sort Bortolato, Tatiana
collection PubMed
description One universal feature of human language is its versatility in communicating about juxtapositions of everyday events. Versatile combinatorial systems of communication can be selected for if (a) several vocal units are flexibly combined into numerous and long vocal sequences and (b) vocal sequences relate to numerous daily life events. We propose (b) is more likely during simultaneous or serial (concomitant) events than single events. We analyzed 9,391 vocal utterances across the repertoire of wild chimpanzees and their events of production. Chimpanzees used vocal sequences across a range of daily life events and twice as often during concomitant than single events. Also, utterance diversity correlated positively with event diversity. Our results show the potential of chimpanzee vocal sequences to convey combined information about numerous daily life events, a step from which generalized combinatoriality could have evolved.
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spelling pubmed-105907442023-10-24 Chimpanzees show the capacity to communicate about concomitant daily life events Bortolato, Tatiana Friederici, Angela D. Girard-Buttoz, Cédric Wittig, Roman M. Crockford, Catherine iScience Article One universal feature of human language is its versatility in communicating about juxtapositions of everyday events. Versatile combinatorial systems of communication can be selected for if (a) several vocal units are flexibly combined into numerous and long vocal sequences and (b) vocal sequences relate to numerous daily life events. We propose (b) is more likely during simultaneous or serial (concomitant) events than single events. We analyzed 9,391 vocal utterances across the repertoire of wild chimpanzees and their events of production. Chimpanzees used vocal sequences across a range of daily life events and twice as often during concomitant than single events. Also, utterance diversity correlated positively with event diversity. Our results show the potential of chimpanzee vocal sequences to convey combined information about numerous daily life events, a step from which generalized combinatoriality could have evolved. Elsevier 2023-09-28 /pmc/articles/PMC10590744/ /pubmed/37876805 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2023.108090 Text en © 2023 The Authors https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Bortolato, Tatiana
Friederici, Angela D.
Girard-Buttoz, Cédric
Wittig, Roman M.
Crockford, Catherine
Chimpanzees show the capacity to communicate about concomitant daily life events
title Chimpanzees show the capacity to communicate about concomitant daily life events
title_full Chimpanzees show the capacity to communicate about concomitant daily life events
title_fullStr Chimpanzees show the capacity to communicate about concomitant daily life events
title_full_unstemmed Chimpanzees show the capacity to communicate about concomitant daily life events
title_short Chimpanzees show the capacity to communicate about concomitant daily life events
title_sort chimpanzees show the capacity to communicate about concomitant daily life events
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10590744/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37876805
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2023.108090
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