Pritty Patel-Grosz: "A Formal Semantics of Ape Gestures"

Pritty Patel-Grosz, University of Oslo: "A Formal Semantics of Ape Gestures"

Abstract
A growing body of research applies methodology inspired by formal linguistics to body-based meaning making in our closest primate relatives. In this talk, I address primate communicative body movement in the shape of great ape gestures, using a formal semantics angle to analyze them. We probe the question of whether human and non-human great apes (humans, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans) share a common set of directive (imperative) gestures and their meanings. In an exploratory experiment (n=300), we tested whether human participants would infer the same gesture functions that have been observed in chimpanzees. Notably, a large number of ape gestures are multifunctional, in that they are observed to communicate one function in some contexts and a different function in other contexts. Applying the tools of formal semantics, we find that an abstract core meaning can be proposed for such multifunctional gestures based on the overlap between the attested functions (e.g. between a “Stop that” function and a “Move away” function); our search for a hypothesized inventory of universal primate gestures needs to look for meanings at this level of abstraction, rather than a more concrete level.