title: Where have all the (ape) gestures gone?
abstract: Comparative analysis of the gestural communication of our nearest animal relatives, the great apes, implies that humans should have the biological potential to produce and understand 60-70 gestures, by virtue of shared common descent. These gestures are used intentionally in apes to convey separate requests, rather than as referential items in syntactically structured signals. At present, no such legacy of shared gesture has been described in humans. We suggest that the fate of "ape gestures" in modern human communication is relevant to the debate regarding the evolution of language through a possible intermediate stage of gestural protolanguage.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology & Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Scotland. rwb@st-andrews.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Richard W
authors.initials: RW
authors.lastname: Byrne
authors.affiliation: Cognition, Communication & Development Laboratory, University of Toulouse, Toulouse, France.
authors.forename: Hélène
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Cochet
mesh_terms: D000819:Animal Communication; D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D005868:Gestures; D015186:Hominidae; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language
keywords: Communication; Gesture; Great ape; Language origin