Chimpanzees show the capacity to communicate about concomitant daily life events
Tatiana Bortolato,
Angela D. Friederici,
Cédric Girard-Buttoz,
Roman M. Wittig,
Catherine Crockford
Affiliations
Tatiana Bortolato
The Ape Social Mind Lab, Institut des Sciences Cognitives, CNRS UMR 5229, Bron 69500, France; Department of Human Behaviour, Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany; Taï Chimpanzee Project, Centre Suisse des Recherches Scientifiques, Abidjan 1303, Ivory Coast; Corresponding author
Angela D. Friederici
Department of Neuropsychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive Sciences, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
Cédric Girard-Buttoz
The Ape Social Mind Lab, Institut des Sciences Cognitives, CNRS UMR 5229, Bron 69500, France; Department of Human Behaviour, Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany; Taï Chimpanzee Project, Centre Suisse des Recherches Scientifiques, Abidjan 1303, Ivory Coast
Roman M. Wittig
The Ape Social Mind Lab, Institut des Sciences Cognitives, CNRS UMR 5229, Bron 69500, France; Department of Human Behaviour, Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany; Taï Chimpanzee Project, Centre Suisse des Recherches Scientifiques, Abidjan 1303, Ivory Coast
Catherine Crockford
The Ape Social Mind Lab, Institut des Sciences Cognitives, CNRS UMR 5229, Bron 69500, France; Department of Human Behaviour, Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany; Taï Chimpanzee Project, Centre Suisse des Recherches Scientifiques, Abidjan 1303, Ivory Coast; Corresponding author
Summary: 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.
