Living Links, Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center,
and Psychology Department, Emory University, Atlanta, USA.

abstract

Human language is a unique system of communication characterized by arbitrary symbols with context-defined meanings that are freely combined in hierarchical structures, called syntax. I will focus on the last two characteristics of language with regards to the behavior of nonhuman primates, and argue that they are no strangers to the free combination of elements, and hierarchically structured solutions to problems, both social and technical. We know since Wolfgang Köhler’s work of the 1920s that the free combination of old knowledge into new, adaptive solutions is a hallmark of pongid intelligence. We also can view ape tool-use, political strategies, even plant processing as organized in clusters and subclusters of if-then routines. I will further review evidence for reciprocal altruism and exchange of favors among chimpanzees, which is an interindividual if-then routine. My arguments will parallel those that I have made before with regards to the evolution of morality: the full-blown mechanism appears absent in apes, but many of the building blocks can be found. In the same way, humans didn’t evolve language from scratch, but exploited many classificatory, combinatorial, and organizational mental abilities that we share with our closest relatives.

 Conference site: http://www.infres.enst.fr/confs/evolang/