Bonobos uses some kind of syntax that is thought to be specific to humans

Bonobos combines his calls in a complex way that creates different expressions, a sign that such a syntact is more evolutionally older than before.

Human language usually The distinctive feature of our speciesIt consists of many different building blocks. A core block is the syntax that meaningful units are combined into sentences in longer sequences, such as words. This is possible with the composition of the meaning of the whole from the meaning of the parts.

Composition in itself is not specific to humans. For example, Chimpanzees combine calls To warn others snake. However, so far, only “insignificant composition ında has been defined in non -human animals, so that each unit adds independently of the meaning of the whole. For example, the phrase “blonde dancer ü has two independent units: a blonde person who is also a dancer. It was thought that people were unique when they had a “insignificant composition ğı, where words in a combination mean something different from what they meant. For example, the phrase “bad dancer” does not mean a dancing bad person.

The problem was that biologists did not have tools to give a clear meaning to animal voice. Mélissa Berthet At the University of Zurich in Switzerland, they would not be sure whether a combination was insignificant or insignificant.

Berthet and his colleagues spent the methods of learning and adjusting linguistic methods to try to find definitive proof of non -insignificant composition in our nearest relatives. This included in Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve in the Democratic Republic of Congo, including 30 adults to spend five months after watching Bonobo, and to save about 1000 examples of a Bonobo called. The roughly half of these expressions were combinations where at least two different types of calls were rapidly matched.

In a new step, the researchers noted everything that happened during the call and in the following minutes. They recorded more than 300 of these observations, including what the caller did at that time, what was going on in the environment, and after the voice of the audience’s behavior.

In order to reveal the meaning of each call, they used a technique of linguistics to create a type of expression by placing voices closer to each other under similar conditions. “We set up a kind of dictionary, Bert says Berthlet. “We have a voice and a meaning.”

When they had this semantic cloud, they could see if the calls in a combination had different meanings, and they could find that the combinations were close to the units where they were made, which would propose the composition. Using this approach, they identified four calls that were clearly not insignificant, and their meanings did not coincide directly with their founding pieces. For example, “Hoot-Hoot + Low-Hoot” combines the calls that seem to say “Watch out to me” and “care to me, and“ I pay attention to me because I am in trouble ”, Bonobos uses because another person calls for support while intimidating them.

Almost all of Bonobos’ speech was about coordinating the group. Team member Martin Surbeck At Harvard University, he thinks that Bonobos has a fusion fusion group dynamics where smaller groups can do their own business.

“For the first time in any animal species, there is a definite evidence for the insignificant syntax, insignificant composition, and thus changes the game,” he says. Maël Leroux At the University of Rennes in France. “This is the revolutionary.

This finding does not mean that Bonobos is the language, because the language is a human communication system, says Berthet. “But we show that they have a very complex communication system that parallels to human language.”

Now we have evidence that both schemes and bonobos have syntacticism, which is inevitable that this composition capacity will be inherited from our last common ancestors. “Only certainly showed that this core building was evolutionary old and at least 7 million years old and perhaps even older.”