evolution may not be independent of the evolution of social systems.If
we suppose that language and music have a long evolutionary history
rooted in primate communication,we are forced to seek those special
forms of primate sociality that might support evolution of languagelike
and musiclike capacities.
This approach might also look to great apes for the emergence of inter-
mediate stages between lower-level animal communication and human
language.Presumably the potential for reorganization existed at the level
of the common ancestor of apes and humans and led to nonhuman-type
specializations in great apes,whereas a radical reorganization ensued in
the course of language evolution.Language Competence of Chimpanzees
Language-teaching experiments demonstrate that both common chim-
panzees and bonobos are able to acquire two fundamental language
characteristics,at least to a certain extent.First,trained chimpanzees
understand that arbitrary signs can replace and represent objects.
Premack’s chimpanzee Sarah was able to carry out classification without
the actual presence of objects,using only plastic figures representing
words.She chose,for example,a pink square and blue triangle as iden-
tical,since they both meant fruits (Premack 1985).So,chimpanzees can
learn and use the names of a number of objects,attributes,and actions,
and can be taught a considerable vocabulary of words (Savage-
Rumbaugh 1979;Gardner and Gardner 1984;Premack 1985).These
animals’ comprehension of words is not limited to gestures or pictograms,
but can include spoken utterances (Brakke and Savage-Rumbaugh 1995).
That is,they can acquire the meanings of spoken words even though they
cannot produce articulated sounds themselves.Second,chimpanzees and
bonobos are also able to learn that two or more linguistic elements can
be linked into sentencelike structures in such a way that the order of
their arrangement influences their meaning (Premack 1985;Savage-
Rumbaugh et al.1993).
With the extension of field studies directed to natural vocalizations,it
became clear that laboratory results were not artificial products,but that
vocalizations of both species in the wild have characteristics that furnish
preconditions for these types of performances.Both chimpanzees and
bonobos emit a special form of vocalization,a long call,that is composed
of smaller,acoustically distinguishable elements (Mitani et al.1992;Clark
and Wrangham 1993;Hohmann and Fruth 1994).Although the order of
the four fundamental units is not changed,the animals insert individu-126 Maria Ujhelyi