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Gestures of apes and pre-linguistic human children: Similar or different?

University of Manchester, simone.pika{at}manchester.ac.uk

The majority of studies on animal communication provide evidence that gestural signalling plays an important role in the communication of non-human primates and resembles that of pre-linguistic and just-linguistic human infants in some important ways. However, ape gestures also differ from the gestures of human infants in some important ways, and these differences might provide crucial clues for answering the question of how human language — at least in its cognitive and social-cognitive aspects — evolved from the gestural communication of our ape-like ancestors. This article provides an overview on the gestural signalling of monkeys and apes to enable a comparison with gestures in pre- or just-linguistic children. Implications for the evolution of language are discussed.

Key Words: Apes • development • evolution of language • gestures • human children • learning

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