Cover not available
Article published In:
Gesture
Vol. 19:2/3 (2020) ► pp.335–364

Context, not sequence order, affects the meaning of bonobo (Pan paniscus) gestures

| University of St Andrews
| Kyoto University
| University of St Andrews
In most languages, individual words can be ambiguous between several different meanings, but through syntax and context the intended meaning of an ambiguous word usually becomes apparent. Many great ape gestures also have ambiguous meanings, which poses the problem of how individuals can interpret the signaller’s intended meaning in specific instances. We tested the effects of sequence compositionality and situational context (including behavioural and interpersonal contexts) in wild bonobos (Pan paniscus) at Wamba, DRCongo. We found no effect on a gesture’s meaning from its presence and position in sequence. However, two aspects of situational context did affect meaning: behaviour of the signaller immediately prior to gesturing, and relative age/sex of signaller and recipient. The intended meaning of ambiguous gestures was almost completely disambiguated by means of these aspects of context. Our findings suggest that the use of contextual information to interpret ambiguous signals predates the uniquely-human lineage and is not specific to language.
Keywords: bonobo, gesture, syntax, context, meaning
Article outline
  • Methods
    • Data collection
    • Video coding
    • Inter-observer reliability
  • Results
    • Do gesture types convey the same meanings when they are used singly as when they are used in sequences?
    • Are gesture types more likely to appear at a specific position in a sequence?
    • Does the position of a gesture in a sequence affect its meaning?
    • Can behavioural context reduce the ambiguity of gesture meanings?
    • Does interpersonal context further reduce ambiguity in gesture meaning?
  • Discussion
  • References
Published online: 28 September 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/gest.19028.gra
References (39)
References
Arnold, Kate & Zuberbühler, Klaus. (2008). Meaningful call combinations in a non-human primate. Current Biology, 18 (5), 202–203. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bates, Elizabeth. (1976). Language and context: The acquisition of pragmatics. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Bruner, Jerome S. (1981). Intention in the structure of action and interaction. Advances in Infancy Research, 11, 41–56.Google Scholar
Byrne, Richard W., Cartmill, Erica A., Genty, Emilie, Graham, Kirsty E., Hobaiter, Catherine, & Tanner, Joanne. (2017). Great ape gestures: intentional communication with a rich set of innate signals. Animal Cognition, 20 (4), 755–769. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Call, Josep & Tomasello, Michael. (2007). The gestural communication of apes and monkeys. Manhaw, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Cäsar, Cristiane, Zuberbühler, Klaus, Young, Robert J., & Byrne, Richard W. (2013). Titi monkey call sequences vary with predator location and type. Biology Letters, 91, 20130535. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clay, Zanna & Zuberbühler, Klaus. (2009). Food-associated calling sequences in bonobos. Animal Behaviour, 77 (6), 1387–1396. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2011). Bonobos extract meaning from call sequences. PloS One, 6 (4), e18786. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Corballis, Michael C. (2002). From hand to mouth: The origins of language. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Engesser, Sabrina, Crane, Jodie M. S., Savage, James L., Russell, Andrew F., & Townsend, Simon W. (2015). Experimental evidence for phonemic contrasts in a nonhuman vocal system. PLoS Biology, 13 (6), 1–16. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Engesser, Sabrina, Ridley, Amanda R., & Townsend, Simon W. (2016). Meaningful call combinations and compositional processing in the southern pied babbler. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113 (21), 5976–5981. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fitch, W. Tecumseh. (2010). The evolution of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Freeman, G. H., & Halton, John H. (1951). Note on an exact treatment of contingency, goodness of fit and other problems of significance. Biometrika, 38 (1/2), 141–149. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Furuichi, Takeshi. (2011). Female contributions to the peaceful nature of bonobo society. Evolutionary Anthropology, 20 (4), 131–142. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Genty, Emilie & Byrne, Richard W. (2010). Why do gorillas make sequences of gestures? Animal Cognition, 13 (2), 287–301. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goodall, Jane. (1986). The chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of behavior. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.Google Scholar
Graham, Kirsty E., Furuichi, Takeshi, & Byrne, Richard W. (2017). The gestural repertoire of the wild bonobo (Pan paniscus): a mutually understood communication system. Animal Cognition, 20 (2), 171–177. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Graham, Kirsty E., Hobaiter, Catherine, Ounsley, James, Furuichi, Takeshi, & Byrne, Richard W. (2018). Bonobo and chimpanzee gestures overlap extensively in meaning. PLoS Biology, 16 (2), e2004825. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Halina, Marta, Rossano, Federico, & Tomasello, Michael. (2013). The ontogenetic ritualization of bonobo gestures. Animal Cognition, 16 (4), 653–666. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hashimoto, Chie. (1997). Context and development of sexual behavior of wild bonobos (Pan paniscus) at Wamba, Zaire. International Journal of Primatology, 18 (1), 1–21. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Herman, Louis M., Kuczaj, Stan A., & Holder, Mark D. (1993). Responses to anomalous gestural sequences by a language-trained dolphin: Evidence for processing of semantic relations and syntactic information. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 122 (2), 184–194. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hobaiter, Catherine & Byrne, Richard W. (2011). Serial gesturing by wild chimpanzees: its nature and function for communication. Animal Cognition, 14 (6), 827–838. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2014). The meanings of chimpanzee gestures. Current Biology, 24 (14), 1–5. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2017). What is a gesture? A meaning-based approach to defining gestural repertoires. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 821, 3–12. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jansen, David A., Cant, Michael A., & Manser, Marta B. (2013). Segmental concatenation of individual signatures and context cues in banded mongoose (Mungos mungo) close calls. BMC Biology, 10 (97).Google Scholar
Liebal, Katja, Call, Josep, & Tomasello, Michael. (2004). Use of gesture sequences in chimpanzees. American Journal of Primatology, 641, 377–396. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mehta, Cyrus R. & Patel, Nitin R. (1983). A network algorithm for performing Fisher exact test in r X c contingency-tables. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 78 (382), 427–434.Google Scholar
Moore, Richard. (2016). Meaning and ostension in great ape gestural communication. Animal Cognition, 191, 223–231. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pepperberg, Irene M. (1999). The Alex studies: Cognitive and communicative abilities of grey parrots. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Pika, Simone, Liebal, Katja, & Tomasello, Michael. (2005). Gestural communication in subadult bonobos (Pan paniscus): repertoire and use. American Journal of Primatology, 65 (1), 39–61. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Plooij, Frans X. (1978). Some basic traits of language in wild chimpanzees? In A. Lock. (Ed.), Action gesture and symbol (pp. 111–131). London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Pollick, Amy S. & de Waal, Frans B. M. (2007). Ape gestures and language evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104 (19), 8184–8189. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Progovac, Ljiljana. (2015). Evolutionary syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rodd, Jenifer, Gaskell, Gareth, & Marslen-Wilson, William. (2002). Making sense of semantic ambiguity: Semantic competition in lexical access. Journal of Memory and Language, 46 (2), 245–266. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Savage-Rumbaugh, E. Sue, Murphy, Jeannine, Sevcik, Rose A., Brakke, Karen E., Williams, Shelly L., & Rumbaugh, Duane M. (1993). Language comprehension in ape and child. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 58 (3/4), 1–222. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Scott, Nicole M. (2013). Gesture use by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): Differences between sexes in inter-and intra-sexual interactions. American Journal of Primatology, 751, 555–567. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Smith, W. John. (1965). Message, meaning, and context in ethology. The American Naturalist, 99 (908), 405–409. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tabossi, Patrizia & Zardon, Francesco. (1993). Processing ambiguous words in context. Journal of Memory and Language, 32 (3), 359–372. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Townsend, Simon W., Koski, Sonja E., Byrne, Richard W., Slocombe, Katie E., Bickel, Balthasar, Boeckle, Markus, Braga Goncalves, Ines, Burkart, Judith M., Flower, Tom, Gaunet, Florence, Glock, Hans Johann, Gruber, Thibaud, Jansen, David A. W. A. M., Liebal, Katja, Linke, Angelika, Miklósi, Ádám, Moore, Richard, Schaik, Carel P., Stoll, Sabine, Vail, Alex, Waller, Bridget M., Wild, Markus, Zuberbühler, Klaus, & Manser, Marta B. (2017). Exorcising Grice’s ghost: an empirical approach to studying intentional communication in animals. Biological Reviews, 92 (3), 1427–1433. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (13)

Cited by 13 other publications

Amici, Federica, Linda Oña & Katja Liebal
2024. Compositionality in Primate Gestural Communication and Multicomponent Signal Displays. International Journal of Primatology 45:3 ► pp. 482 ff. DOI logo
Fröhlich, Marlen, Maria A. van Noordwijk, Tatang Mitra Setia, Carel P. van Schaik & Ulrich Knief
2024. Wild and captive immature orangutans differ in their non-vocal communication with others, but not with their mothers. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 78:1 DOI logo
Henderson, Mathew, Patrick G. Grosz, Kirsty E. Graham, Catherine Hobaiter & Pritty Patel‐Grosz
2024. Shared semantics: Exploring the interface between human and chimpanzee gestural communication. Mind & Language DOI logo
Cartmill, Erica A.
2023. Overcoming bias in the comparison of human language and animal communication. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120:47 DOI logo
Graham, Kirsty E.
2023. Bonobo Gestures, Meanings, and Context. In Bonobos and People at Wamba: 50 Years of Research, ► pp. 167 ff. DOI logo
Graham, Kirsty E., Catherine Hobaiter & Frans B. M. de Waal
2023. Towards a great ape dictionary: Inexperienced humans understand common nonhuman ape gestures. PLOS Biology 21:1 ► pp. e3001939 ff. DOI logo
Grund, Charlotte, Gal Badihi, Kirsty E. Graham, Alexandra Safryghin & Catherine Hobaiter
2023. GesturalOrigins: A bottom-up framework for establishing systematic gesture data across ape species. Behavior Research Methods 56:2 ► pp. 986 ff. DOI logo
Graham, Kirsty E., Gal Badihi, Alexandra Safryghin, Charlotte Grund & Catherine Hobaiter
2022. A socio-ecological perspective on the gestural communication of great ape species, individuals, and social units. Ethology Ecology & Evolution 34:3 ► pp. 235 ff. DOI logo
Hobaiter, Catherine, Kirsty E. Graham & Richard W. Byrne
2022. Are ape gestures like words? Outstanding issues in detecting similarities and differences between human language and ape gesture. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 377:1860 DOI logo
Levinson, Stephen C.
2022. The interaction engine: cuteness selection and the evolution of the interactional base for language. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 377:1859 DOI logo
Roberts, Sam G. B., Robin I. M. Dunbar & Anna I. Roberts
2022. Communicative roots of complex sociality and cognition: preface to the theme issue. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 377:1860 DOI logo
Wilke, C., N.J. Lahiff, G. Badihi, E. Donnellan, C. Hobaiter, Z.P. Machanda, R. Mundry, S. Pika, A. Soldati, R.W. Wrangham, K. Zuberbűhler & K.E. Slocombe
2022. Referential gestures are not ubiquitous in wild chimpanzees: alternative functions for exaggerated loud scratch gestures. Animal Behaviour 189 ► pp. 23 ff. DOI logo
Fröhlich, Marlen, Natasha Bartolotta, Caroline Fryns, Colin Wagner, Laurene Momon, Marvin Jaffrezic, Tatang Mitra Setia, Caroline Schuppli, Maria A. van Noordwijk & Carel P. van Schaik
2021. Orangutans have larger gestural repertoires in captivity than in the wild—A case of weak innovation?. iScience 24:11 ► pp. 103304 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.