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Comparing communicative competence in child and chimp: the pragmatics of repetition*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Patricia M. Greenfield  and
E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh
Patricia M. Greenfield*
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh
Affiliation:
Georgia State University and Yerkes Primate Research Center, Emory University
*
Department of Psychology, University of California, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024, USA.
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Abstract

Through an analysis of chimpanzee–human discourse, we show that two Pan troglodytes chimpanzees and two Pan paniscus chimpanzees (bonobos) exposed to a humanly devised symbol system use partial or complete repetition of others' symbols, as children do: they do not produce rote imitations, but instead use repetition to fulfil a variety of pragmatic functions in discourse. These functions include agreement, request, promise, excitement, and selection from alternatives. In so doing, the chimpanzees demonstrate contingent turn-taking and the use of simple devices for lexical cohesion. In short, they demonstrate conversational competence. Because of the presence of this conversational competence in three sibling species, chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans, it is concluded that the potential to express pragmatic functions through repetition was part of the evolutionary history of human language, present in our common ancestor before the phylogenetic divergence of hominids and chimpanzees. In the context of these similarities, two interesting differences appeared: (1) Human children sometimes used repetition to stimulate more talk in their conversational partner; the chimpanzees, in contrast, use repetition exclusively to forward the non-verbal action. This difference may illuminate a unique feature of human linguistic communication, or it may simply reflect a modality difference (visual symbols used by the chimpanzees, speech used by the children) in the symbol systems considered in this research. A second difference seems likely to reflect a true species difference: utterance length. The one- and two-symbol repetitions used by the chimpanzees to fulfil a variety of pragmatic functions were less than half the maximum length found in either the visual symbol combinations addressed to them by their adult human caregivers or the oral repetitions of two-year-old children. This species difference probably reflects the evolution of increased brain size and consequent increased memory capacity that has occurred since the phylogenetic divergence of hominids and chimpanzees four to seven million years ago.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , February 1993 , pp. 1 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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Footnotes

[*]

Appreciation is extended to Elizabeth Rubert for assistance in all aspects of training and data collection. This work and its preparation were supported by National Institutes of Health Grant NICHD-06016 and RR-00165 from the National Center for Research Resources to the Yerkes Primate Research Center. The Yerkes Center is fully accredited by the American Association of Laboratory Animal Care. Greenfield was also supported by a grant from the Office of Naval Research to the Bunting Institute, Radcliffe College, by the Bunting Institute, by an award from the UCLA College Institute, and by the UCLA Gold Shield Faculty Prize.

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