IS THERE ANY INTERMEDIATE STAGE BETWEEN ANIMAL COMMUNICATION AND LANGUAGE

Animal communication and human language have fundamental differences i n their structures and functions. Furthermore, there is no living spec ies demonstrating an intermediate stage of language evolution. Thus, w e have difficulty in finding characteristics attributable to a communi cation system which can already be considered as a starting point for linguistic evolution. However, some findings coming from neurolinguist ic research give us the opportunity to suppose that varying and arrang ing linguistic elements can be detached from other grammatical functio ns. Further information in this direction comes from apes' language-te aching experiments; namely bonobos (Pan paniscus) are able to understa nd and produce differences in meaning by varying word arrangements. Ba sed on these results one can suppose that an acoustic signal system, w hich possesses discrete units for variable use, might be very ancient and might exist independent and prior to a more advanced language stat e. In the natural setting, acoustic territorial marking behaviour is e xposed to selection pressure to elaborate sign systems built up from d iscrete, variable units. In addition to the well-known territorial bir d songs, some monkey species and all species of lesser apes have terri torial songs fitting these criteria. The analyses of the so-called lon g calls in chimpanzees and bonobos make it likely that the group-livin g great apes preserved the ability to create syntactically different c alls, which would be developed by requirements of social life. A call repertoire emerged in these species, which contained a large number of call variants at group level available for each group member via soci al learning. This type of animal call is different from ordinary anima l communication; it shows some features of human language. It can repr esent an intermediate stage between animal communication and language, and communication systems similar to this one can be considered as a starting point or first stage of language evolution. (C) 1996 Academic Press Limited