The place of language in multimodal communication in humans and other primates

What is it about?

Humans and chimpanzees, both of them ‘primates’, communicate with one another by signalling meanings in more than one way at a time. The human communicative repertoire includes spoken or written language as well as gestures, facial expressions and other forms of body language. What is especially human about language comes out when we compare the two primates. To some extent their repertoire is shared and chimpanzees have also been taught to use symbols to communicate with humans. Comparing the two species helps to shed light on what aspects of what we call human ’language’ are shared with the great apes and what is unique to humans alone.

Featured Image

Photo by Łukasz Maźnica on Unsplash

Photo by Łukasz Maźnica on Unsplash

Why is it important?

What is unique about the approach adopted in this article is the use of an explanatory framework that places communication within a wider context of the mind as a whole. This show how communication between members of our species using various means at the same time can be understood not only in its own terms but, in addition, as an exemplification of more general principles of human cognition. These principles, which are based on the basic architecture of the mind covering both online performance and stored knowledge, reflect much contemporary thinking about cognition. The setting of various modes of human communication within a much broader theoretical setting has much to offer but notably it brings enhancement and enrichment to our current understanding of the human communicative system.

Perspectives