Cargando…

A stepping stone to compositionality in chimpanzee communication

Compositionality refers to a structural property of human language, according to which the meaning of a complex expression is a function of the meaning of its parts and the way they are combined. Compositionality is a defining characteristic of all human language, spoken and signed. Comparative rese...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Oña, Linda S., Sandler, Wendy, Liebal, Katja
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6745191/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31565566
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.7623
_version_ 1783451506104598528
author Oña, Linda S.
Sandler, Wendy
Liebal, Katja
author_facet Oña, Linda S.
Sandler, Wendy
Liebal, Katja
author_sort Oña, Linda S.
collection PubMed
description Compositionality refers to a structural property of human language, according to which the meaning of a complex expression is a function of the meaning of its parts and the way they are combined. Compositionality is a defining characteristic of all human language, spoken and signed. Comparative research into the emergence of human language aims at identifying precursors to such key features of human language in the communication of other primates. While it is known that chimpanzees, our closest relatives, produce a variety of gestures, facial expressions and vocalizations in interactions with their group members, little is known about how these signals combine simultaneously. Therefore, the aim of the current study is to investigate whether there is evidence for compositional structures in the communication of chimpanzees. We investigated two semi-wild groups of chimpanzees, with focus on their manual gestures and their combinations with facial expressions across different social contexts. If there are compositional structures in chimpanzee communication, adding a facial expression to a gesture should convey a different message than the gesture alone, a difference that we expect to be measurable by the recipient’s response. Furthermore, we expect context-dependent usage of these combinations. Based on a form-based coding procedure of the collected video footage, we identified two frequently used manual gestures (stretched arm gesture and bent arm gesture) and two facial expression (bared teeth face and funneled lip face). We analyzed whether the recipients’ response varied depending on the signaler’s usage of a given gesture + face combination and the context in which these were used. Overall, our results suggest that, in positive contexts, such as play or grooming, specific combinations had an impact on the likelihood of the occurrence of particular responses. Specifically, adding a bared teeth face to a gesture either increased the likelihood of affiliative behavior (for stretched arm gesture) or eliminated the bias toward an affiliative response (for bent arm gesture). We show for the first time that the components under study are recombinable, and that different combinations elicit different responses, a property that we refer to as componentiality. Yet our data do not suggest that the components have consistent meanings in each combination—a defining property of compositionality. We propose that the componentiality exhibited in this study represents a necessary stepping stone toward a fully evolved compositional system.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-6745191
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2019
publisher PeerJ Inc.
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-67451912019-09-27 A stepping stone to compositionality in chimpanzee communication Oña, Linda S. Sandler, Wendy Liebal, Katja PeerJ Animal Behavior Compositionality refers to a structural property of human language, according to which the meaning of a complex expression is a function of the meaning of its parts and the way they are combined. Compositionality is a defining characteristic of all human language, spoken and signed. Comparative research into the emergence of human language aims at identifying precursors to such key features of human language in the communication of other primates. While it is known that chimpanzees, our closest relatives, produce a variety of gestures, facial expressions and vocalizations in interactions with their group members, little is known about how these signals combine simultaneously. Therefore, the aim of the current study is to investigate whether there is evidence for compositional structures in the communication of chimpanzees. We investigated two semi-wild groups of chimpanzees, with focus on their manual gestures and their combinations with facial expressions across different social contexts. If there are compositional structures in chimpanzee communication, adding a facial expression to a gesture should convey a different message than the gesture alone, a difference that we expect to be measurable by the recipient’s response. Furthermore, we expect context-dependent usage of these combinations. Based on a form-based coding procedure of the collected video footage, we identified two frequently used manual gestures (stretched arm gesture and bent arm gesture) and two facial expression (bared teeth face and funneled lip face). We analyzed whether the recipients’ response varied depending on the signaler’s usage of a given gesture + face combination and the context in which these were used. Overall, our results suggest that, in positive contexts, such as play or grooming, specific combinations had an impact on the likelihood of the occurrence of particular responses. Specifically, adding a bared teeth face to a gesture either increased the likelihood of affiliative behavior (for stretched arm gesture) or eliminated the bias toward an affiliative response (for bent arm gesture). We show for the first time that the components under study are recombinable, and that different combinations elicit different responses, a property that we refer to as componentiality. Yet our data do not suggest that the components have consistent meanings in each combination—a defining property of compositionality. We propose that the componentiality exhibited in this study represents a necessary stepping stone toward a fully evolved compositional system. PeerJ Inc. 2019-09-12 /pmc/articles/PMC6745191/ /pubmed/31565566 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.7623 Text en © 2019 Oña et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Animal Behavior
Oña, Linda S.
Sandler, Wendy
Liebal, Katja
A stepping stone to compositionality in chimpanzee communication
title A stepping stone to compositionality in chimpanzee communication
title_full A stepping stone to compositionality in chimpanzee communication
title_fullStr A stepping stone to compositionality in chimpanzee communication
title_full_unstemmed A stepping stone to compositionality in chimpanzee communication
title_short A stepping stone to compositionality in chimpanzee communication
title_sort stepping stone to compositionality in chimpanzee communication
topic Animal Behavior
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6745191/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31565566
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.7623
work_keys_str_mv AT onalindas asteppingstonetocompositionalityinchimpanzeecommunication
AT sandlerwendy asteppingstonetocompositionalityinchimpanzeecommunication
AT liebalkatja asteppingstonetocompositionalityinchimpanzeecommunication
AT onalindas steppingstonetocompositionalityinchimpanzeecommunication
AT sandlerwendy steppingstonetocompositionalityinchimpanzeecommunication
AT liebalkatja steppingstonetocompositionalityinchimpanzeecommunication