Do people have the monopoly of language? | EUROtoday

On May 27, 2025

Get real time updates directly on you device, subscribe now.

LTo nature reminds us that we’re animals, episode 2,383. In the center of the forest, a chimpanzee pushes a cry, one other responds to him, and instantly, a sequence of fuse sounds between the bushes. Simple indistinguishable cries, akin to any toddler who doesn’t know the best way to make himself understood? Not so quick. You could also be witnessing a dialog.

In any case, it’s a observe that Cédric Girard-Buttoz, researcher on the CNRS, together with his colleagues, has swapped the consolation of their workplace for the wetness of the Taï, in Côte d’Ivoire in Côte d’Ivoire. They comply with chimpanzees on the foot of the bushes, prepared to notice the slightest cry, the slightest chuckle. “We are working on chimpanzee communities that are used to humans. These are chimpanzees studied for 45 years. We follow them from morning to evening, we record all their vocalizations, and we note the behaviors that are associated with these cries, ”says the French researcher.

Read too Do monkeys have humor? For a very long time, it was believed that the opposite primates solely emitted frozen cries, alarm or emotion alerts, incapable of the slightest mixture worthy of the title. In quick, language, true, could be our prerogative. But now the chimpanzees, our 98 % widespread DNA cousins come to play the spoilsports.

Thanks to many months of affected person commentary and greater than a thousand hours of recordings within the Ivorian jungle, the researchers uncovered a way more subtle communication system than we imagined. The chimpanzees will not be content material to cries within the void: they mix them, modulate them, rearrange them and, in doing so, they significantly widen the palette of their messages.

“The ditch that separates us from other animals is reduced”

A small monkey dico was sketched by Cédric Girard-Buttoz and his colleagues. The Larousse du Chimpanzé, Jungle version, Compile… Twelve totally different cries. “Each type of cries has variants at the acoustic level”, specifies the researcher, earlier than embarking on a brave imitation of the variants of the “ouuuh”: “if they do” ouuuuuuuh “(with a serious tone), that means that it is to rest, if they do” ouuuh “a little shorter, it will trigger a trip, and if they make a” ouh ” snakes, ”he mime.

And precisely, what surprises is that these twelve cries can combine two by two in more than fifty “bigrams” (scream pairs). But the most fascinating is that the detailed study of the 16 most common bigrams (produced by at least 10 individuals) revealed the diversity of combinatorial mechanisms implemented. Some combinations go without saying. For example, a cry meaning “meals” combined with another signifier “relaxation” gives “meals + relaxation”. Logic.

Read too Should we sacrifice monkeys on the altar of research? But they go further: some combinations create entirely new, idiomatic meanings, which do not simply deduce from the sum of the elements. Cédric Girard-Buttoz takes the example of the expression “to place a rabbit”. The combination of “rabbit” and “pose” has a new meaning compared to the two isolated words.

He explains: “For example, the“ Ouh ”cry is a cry of contact used when they eat or rest. This cry can be combined with another cry used when they play, a kind of laughter. The combination of the two would then mean going to bed at night to make their nest, and to tell others that they want to stay sleeping there. These cries combinations also respond to a specific order. If one is in front of the other, or vice versa, the meaning completely changes.

“As new research exit, the hole that separates us from different animals is diminished,” enthuses Cédric Girard-Buttoz. Their language is much richer than we thought. The chimpanzees meet all the criteria for what is called in jargon a “generative combinatorial system”: their cries are used in a wide variety of contexts. This system, although less open than ours, already allows considerable expansion of the number of possible messages.

Limited combinations

A generative system, but not unlimited. “What remains unique in humans is the ability to speak of abstract concepts, of the past, of the future. The chimpanzees, from what we know, communicate on the present, on what is there, but do not philosophize “, nuance anyway the researcher who slows down our needs for Beat anthropomorphism. The vocal system of chimpanzees, as spectacular as it’s, doesn’t attain complexity or infinite creativity of human language. No prose poems within the jungle.

But then, can we actually communicate of “language” amongst chimpanzees? The query is debated. Purists will object that human language is distinguished by its triple articulation (sounds, phrases, sentences), its hierarchical syntax, its capacity to specific abstraction, lie, poetry. The chimpanzees stay confined to restricted mixtures, with out express or recurrence grammar.

Read too The variole of the monkey got here from … the squirrelBut the border fades. Perhaps it’s crucial to talk of a “proto-language”, of a system in transition, a lacking hyperlink between animal cries and human speech. And discoveries are simply starting. For the second, Cédric Girard-Buttoz and his colleagues have confined themselves to finding out the pairs of cries. But “we have to go beyond two cries, to analyze longer combinations …” It would be the topic of latest analysis for the crew of scientists.

To uncover

The kangaroo of the day

Answer

Studying the habits of our cousins stays elementary to higher perceive ourselves. But this analysis could also be an increasing number of tough to conduct. Chimpanzee is a species in peril. While there have been nearly 2 million firstly of the XX^e A century, at this time, they don’t exceed 500,000 people.

“For us, it’s elementary to check them of their pure setting. It is a means of understanding slightly extra the place our personal language comes from. As quickly as you lose a inhabitants of chimpanzees, you lose a properly -knowledge properly, “alerts the French researcher, before adding:” These disappearances are irreversible, as a result of language doesn’t fossilize. »»

https://www.lepoint.fr/eureka/les-humains-ont-ils-le-monopole-du-langage-27-05-2025-2590685_4706.php