ArticleNature communications2023
Call combinations and compositional processing in wild chimpanzees.
Article in Nature communications, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers.
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Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed, 93 citations in OpenAlex.
- Utterance evolution: the road to generative, combinatorial communicators.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Evolution of primate vocal repertoires: vocal systems as embodied capital for mediating within-group conflict.Primates; journal of primatology · 2026Article
- The As and Bs of titi monkey linguistics: why emotional communication is not the enemy.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Social engagement modulates wild monkeys' vocal expressions and the behavioral response to that of others.iScience · 2026Article
- Structure without semantics: no evidence for bonobo compositionality in Berthet et al. (2025).PeerJ · 2026Article
- Challenges and new opportunities in deciphering the meaning of corvid call sequences.Animal cognition · 2025Review
- Compositionality in human and animal communication.Animal cognition · 2025Review
- Article
- Birds combined calls more than 11 million years ago.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Non-human primates can flexibly learn serial sequences and reorder context-dependent object sequences.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Generative vocal plasticity in chimpanzees.iScience · 2025Article
- Long arcuate fascicle in wild and captive chimpanzees as a potential structural precursor of the language network.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Versatile use of chimpanzee call combinations promotes meaning expansion.Science advances · 2025Article
- How did vocal communication come to dominate human language? A view from the womb.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Non-adjacent dependency processing (or lack thereof) in bonobos: an artificial grammar experiment.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Reply to 'The core language network separated from other networks during primate evolution'.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Wild gelada monkeys detect emotional and prosocial cues in vocal exchanges during aggression.PloS one · 2025Article
- Article
- Investigating the role of the left inferior frontal gyrus in language evolution: insights from comparative neuroscience.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Review
- A bounded hierarchy framework for the evolution of syntax.Biology & philosophy · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 5 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Through syntax, i.e., the combination of words into larger phrases, language can express a limitless number of messages. Data in great apes, our closest-living relatives, are central to the reconstruction of syntax's phylogenetic origins, yet are currently lacking. Here, we provide evidence for syntactic-like structuring in chimpanzee communication. Chimpanzees produce "alarm-huus" when surprised and "waa-barks" when potentially recruiting conspecifics during aggression or hunting. Anecdotal data suggested chimpanzees combine these calls specifically when encountering snakes. Using snake presentations, we confirm call combinations are produced when individuals encounter snakes and find that more individuals join the caller after hearing the combination. To test the meaning-bearing nature of the call combination, we use playbacks of artificially-constructed call combinations and both independent calls. Chimpanzees react most strongly to call combinations, showing longer looking responses, compared with both independent calls. We propose the "alarm-huu + waa-bark" represents a compositional syntactic-like structure, where the meaning of the call combination is derived from the meaning of its parts. Our work suggests that compositional structures may not have evolved de novo in the human lineage, but that the cognitive building-blocks facilitating syntax may have been present in our last common ancestor with chimpanzees.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.