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1 results

  • 11 - Sequencing, Artificial Grammar, and Recursion in Primates

  • Edited by Bennett L. Schwartz, Florida International University, Michael J. Beran, Georgia State University
  • Book:
    Primate Cognitive Studies
    Published online:
    28 July 2022
    Print publication:
    11 August 2022, pp 260-290

  • Summary

    The difference between humans and other primates has often been attributed to humans’ unique ability to learn language and more specifically, represent complex sequential and grammatical structures. Even in the case of language-trained apes, the animals are severely limited in how they put together strings of their learned symbols. This led to theories that this limitation is due to animals’ inability to represent the complex sequential and grammatical patterns needed for language. However, work testing the types of sequences and artificial grammars that nonhuman primates can represent has come a long way. Studies have shown that like humans, nonhuman primates can represent adjacent dependencies, ordinal sequences, and algebraic patterns. Until recently, the types of sequential structures attested in nonhuman animals have been limited to these linear sequences. However, recent work has shown that even in some of the most complex forms of grammatical structures, long-distance dependence and recursive sequences are within the limits of the nonhuman mind.