Amazing stuff! This could be strong hint that animals are much more capable of communication than previously thought!
Wow, this field research was conducted in the long time war torn Democratic Republic of Congo!
"... A bonobo dictionary
In a first step, the researchers applied a method developed by linguists to quantify the meaning of human words. “This allowed us to create a bonobo dictionary of sorts – a complete list of bonobo calls and their meaning,” says Mélissa Berthet, a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology of UZH and lead researcher of the study. “This represents an important step towards understanding the communication of other species, as it is the first time that we have determined the meaning of calls across the whole vocal repertoire of an animal.”
Compositionality is not unique to humans
After determining the meaning of single bonobo vocalizations, the researchers then moved on to investigating call combinations, using another approach borrowed from linguistics. “With our approach, we were able to quantify how the meaning of bonobo single calls and call combinations relate to each other,” ... The researchers found numerous call combinations whose meaning was related to the meaning of their single parts, a key hallmark of compositionality. Furthermore, some of the call combinations bore a striking resemblance to the more complex nontrivial compositional structures in human language. “This suggests that the capacity to combine call types in complex ways is not as unique to humans as we once thought,” ..."
"After determining the meaning of single bonobo vocalizations, the researchers then moved on to investigating call combinations, using another approach borrowed from linguistics. “With our approach, we were able to quantify how the meaning of bonobo single calls and call combinations relate to each other,” says Simon Townsend, UZH Professor and senior author of the study. The researchers found numerous call combinations whose meaning was related to the meaning of their single parts, a key hallmark of compositionality. Furthermore, some of the call combinations bore a striking resemblance to the more complex nontrivial compositional structures in human language. “This suggests that the capacity to combine call types in complex ways is not as unique to humans as we once thought,” ... "
From the editor's summary and abstract:
"Editor’s summary
One hallmark of human language is the combination of elements into larger meaningful structures, a pattern referred to as compositionality. Compositionality can be trivial, in which the two parts are added together to give meaning, or nontrivial, in which the meaning in one part modifies the meaning in the other. Recent research has found the presence of trivial compositionality across a number of species, but it has been argued that nontrivial compositionality is unique to humans.
Berthet et al. used a large dataset of bonobo vocalizations in conjunction with a distributional semantics approach and found that not only did they display compositionality, but three of the four types were nontrivial. ...
Abstract
Compositionality, the capacity to combine meaningful elements into larger meaningful structures, is a hallmark of human language. Compositionality can be trivial (the combination’s meaning is the sum of the meaning of its parts) or nontrivial (one element modifies the meaning of the other element).
Recent studies have suggested that animals lack nontrivial compositionality, representing a key discontinuity with language.
In this work, using methods borrowed from distributional semantics, we investigated compositionality in wild bonobos and found that not only does each call type of their repertoire occur in at least one compositional combination, but three of these compositional combinations also exhibit nontrivial compositionality.
These findings suggest that compositionality is a prominent feature of the bonobo vocal system, revealing stronger parallels with human language than previously thought."
Bonobos Combine Calls in Similar Ways to Human Language (original news release) "Bonobos – our closest living relatives – create complex and meaningful combinations of calls resembling the word combinations of humans. This study ... challenges long-held assumptions about what makes human communication unique and suggests that key aspects of language are evolutionary ancient."
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