Wild chimpanzees alter the meaning of single calls when embedding them into diverse call combinations, mirroring linguistic operations in human language. Human language, however, allows an infinite generation of meaning by combining phonemes into words and words into sentences. This contrasts with the very few meaningful combinations reported in animals, leaving the mystery of human language evolution unresolved.
  • LanguageIsCool@lemmy.world
    2·
    2 months ago

    That would require higher cognitive complexity though, wouldn’t it? Seems more rudimentary to attach simple meaning to simple sounds and combine those for “simple” extended meaning as opposed to having meaningless syllables create distinct words with distinct meanings.