Linguistics

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Genomic study indicates our capacity for language emerged 135,000 years ago (phys.org)

submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Great comment always. In addition to dolphins I think it's possible that corvids might demonstrate certain aspects of grammar too, though I don't think the research is conclusive yet. I remember reading news about corvids possibly showing capacity for recursion.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

Chimps, too. I couldn't find the article to link here, but I remember seeing somewhere that they have discrete howls that can be combined for subtler meaning; not too far from having a howl for "leopard", another for "close", and then using both to say "there's a leopard nearby".

The key difference between chimps, corvids and dolphis vs. humans is that humans developed that system to the point it eclipsed non-verbal communication (although we still use it a fair bit).