Human speech is frequently accompanied by movements of the arms and hands termed gestures. The majority of these gestures is invented spontaneously and is highly iconic but some gestures are used functionally in ways very similar to speech that is symbolically, referentially, based on intersubjectively learned and shared social conventions. Our closest living relatives, the great apes also use gestures in their natural communication in a variety of contexts such as play, grooming, sex and agonistic encounters. A deep understanding of apes’ gestural signalling might therefore be helpful to get insight into the evolutionary scenario of human communication and cognition. The present chapter investigates the nature of the gestural signalling of the four great apes, bonobos (Pan paniscus), chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), gorillas (Gorilla gorilla) and orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus), with a special focus on the following three aspects: (1) the intentionality of gestures, (2) their referential use, and (3) similarities and differences to gestures in prelinguistic or just-linguistic human infants.
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Unternbäumen, Enrique Huelva
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Zlatev, Jordan, Sławomir Wacewicz, Przemyslaw Zywiczynski & Joost van de Weijer
2017. Multimodal-first or pantomime-first?. Interaction Studies. Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systems 18:3 ► pp. 465 ff.
Pika, Simone
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Racine, Timothy P., Tyler J. Wereha, Olga Vasileva, Donna Tafreshi & Joseph J. Thompson
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Zlatev, Jordan
2014. Bodily Mimesis and the Transition to Speech. In The Evolution of Social Communication in Primates [Interdisciplinary Evolution Research, 1], ► pp. 165 ff.
Liebal, Katja & Josep Call
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Pika, Simone & Thomas Bugnyar
2011. The use of referential gestures in ravens (Corvus corax) in the wild. Nature Communications 2:1
Cartmill, Erica A. & Richard W. Byrne
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