Short description: Can a Construction Grammar approach prove helpful in comparing human language and great ape gesture systems?

Abstract:

Constructionist approaches describe language as a structured network of form-meaning pairings of varying degrees of schematicity and prototypicality. Language acquisition is seen as based on general social and cognitive skills. Starting out from concrete, item-based constructions, children use these skills to extract and gradually abstract constructions from instances of actual language use (Tomasello 2006). Constructionist approaches haven been increasingly applied to language evolution research (e.g. Hurford 2012). In line with this growing research movement, in this paper we propose that constructionist approaches can prove useful in elucidating similarities and differences between human language and non-human primate communication systems. Specifically, we will discuss the question whether the nature of great ape gestures systems can be captured in terms of an inventory of (proto-)constructions and whether such a network is based on cognitive capacities homologous to the cognitive infrastructure underlying the acquisition, usage, and processing of constructions in humans.

Regarding the gesture systems of chimpanzees, Roberts et al. (2012: 586-587) note that they “have a multifaceted and complex repertoire of manual gestures, organised around prototypes, within which there is considerable variation.” Schematization and prototypicality can therefore be seen as important foundational features both of great ape gesture systems as well as for the human constructicon. In a usage-based, constructionist approach linguistic knowledge also relies heavily on these capacities, as it is seen to consist in abstractions and schematizations from exemplar representations of experience in context that form radial prototype networks. Importantly, Roberts et al. note that there are gestures that are “intermediate between the prototypical forms” (587) and are not structurally discrete but instead graded. Similarly, usage-based accounts of language acquisition assume that knowledge of linguistic constructions in young children is characterized by fuzzy boundaries and graded representations (e.g. Abbot-Smith, Lieven & Tomasello 2008).

Another important point of comparison concerns the role of pragmatics in human and non-human primate communication. In studies of the gesture systems of great apes it was found that they flexibly use multiple different gestures in the same context for the same goal. They also use single gestures in different contexts with different goals (Liebal et al. 2014: 155). As Genty & Zuberbühler (2015) note, “several gestures appear to have several outcomes, suggesting that meaning resides more in the pragmatic context than in the morphological form of the signal,” although there are also some iconic and deictic gestures. Human linguistic constructions, in contrast, possess a more specific conceptual content. Still, the meaning side of human linguistic constructions is prototypical and schematic and is only properly instantiated in actual language use in particular contexts. It is thus also heavily dependent on pragmatics. Overall, then, human constructions and great ape gesture systems exhibit striking similarities but also marked differences.

References

Abbot-Smith, K., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2008). Graded representations in the acquisition of English and German transitive constructions. Cognitive Development, 23, 48-66.

Hurford, J.R. (2012). The Origins of Grammar: Language in the Light of Evolution II. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Genty, E. & Zuberbühler, K. (2015). Iconic gesturing in bonobos. Communicative & Integrative Biology, 8(1), e992742

Liebal, K., Waller, B.M., Burrows, A.M. & Slocombe, K.E. (2014): Primate Communication: A Multimodal Approach. Cambridge: CUP.

Roberts, A.I. , Vick, S, Roberts, S.G.B., Buchanan-Smith, H.M. & Zuberbühler, K. (2012). A structure-based repertoire of manual gestures in wild chimpanzees:statistical analyses of a graded communication system. Evolution and Human Behaviour, 33, 578-589.

Tomasello, M. (2006). Construction grammar for kids. Constructions, SV1-11/2006.

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Citation:

Pleyer M. and Hartmann S. (2016). Construction Grammar For Apes. In S.G. Roberts, C. Cuskley, L. McCrohon, L. Barceló-Coblijn, O. Fehér & T. Verhoef (eds.) The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference (EVOLANG11). Available online: http://evolang.org/neworleans/papers/185.html