Chapter published in:
How the Brain Got Language – Towards a New Road MapEdited by Michael A. Arbib
[Benjamins Current Topics 112] 2020
► pp. 136–150
From sharing food to sharing information
Cooperative breeding and language evolution
Judith Burkart | University of Zurich
Eloisa Guerreiro Martins | University of Zurich
Fabia Miss | University of Zurich
Yvonne Zürcher | University of Zurich
Language is a cognitively demanding human trait, but it is also a fundamentally cooperative enterprise that rests on the
motivation to share information. Great apes possess many of the cognitive prerequisites for language, but largely lack the
motivation to share information. Callitrichids (including marmosets and tamarins) are highly vocal monkeys that are more
distantly related to humans than great apes are, but like humans, they are cooperative breeders and all group members help
raising offspring. Among primates, this rearing system is correlated with proactive prosociality, which can be expressed as
motivation to share information. We therefore propose that the unique coincidence of these two components in humans set the
stage for language evolution: The cognitive component inherited from our great ape-like ancestors, and the motivational one
added convergently as a result of cooperative breeding. We evaluate this scenario based on a review of callitrichd vocal
communication and show that furthermore, they possess many of the mechanistic elements emphasized by the mirror system
hypothesis of language evolution. We end by highlighting how more systematic phylogenetic comparisons will enable us to
further promote our understanding of the role of cooperative breeding during language evolution.
Keywords: primates, prosociality, marmosets, cooperative breeding, convergence, shared ancestry, information sharing
Published online: 11 August 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.112.10bur
https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.112.10bur
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