Combinatorial Communication in Bacteria: Implications for the Origins of Linguistic Generativity

Combinatorial communication, in which two signals are used together to achieve an effect that is different to the sum of the effects of the component parts, is apparently rare in nature: it is ubiquitous in human language, appears to exist in a simple form in some non-human primates, but has not bee...

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Main Authors:	Scott-Phillips, Thomas C., Gurney, James, Ivens, Alasdair, Diggle, Stephen P., Popat, Roman
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Public Library of Science 2014
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3997515/

id	pubmed-3997515
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-39975152014-04-29 Combinatorial Communication in Bacteria: Implications for the Origins of Linguistic Generativity Scott-Phillips, Thomas C. Gurney, James Ivens, Alasdair Diggle, Stephen P. Popat, Roman Research Article Combinatorial communication, in which two signals are used together to achieve an effect that is different to the sum of the effects of the component parts, is apparently rare in nature: it is ubiquitous in human language, appears to exist in a simple form in some non-human primates, but has not been demonstrated in other species. This observed distribution has led to the pair of related suggestions, that (i) these differences in the complexity of observed communication systems reflect cognitive differences between species; and (ii) that the combinations we see in non-human primates may be evolutionary pre-cursors of human language. Here we replicate the landmark experiments on combinatorial communication in non-human primates, but in an entirely different species, unrelated to humans, and with no higher cognition: the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Using the same general methods as the primate studies, we find the same general pattern of results: the effect of the combined signal differs from the composite effect of the two individual signals. This suggests that advanced cognitive abilities and large brains do not necessarily explain why some species have combinatorial communication systems and others do not. We thus argue that it is premature to conclude that the systems observed in non-human primates are evolutionarily related to language. Our results illustrate the value of an extremely broad approach to comparative research. Public Library of Science 2014-04-23 /pmc/articles/PMC3997515/ /pubmed/24759740 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0095929 Text en © 2014 Scott-Phillips et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Scott-Phillips, Thomas C. Gurney, James Ivens, Alasdair Diggle, Stephen P. Popat, Roman
spellingShingle	Scott-Phillips, Thomas C. Gurney, James Ivens, Alasdair Diggle, Stephen P. Popat, Roman Combinatorial Communication in Bacteria: Implications for the Origins of Linguistic Generativity
author_facet	Scott-Phillips, Thomas C. Gurney, James Ivens, Alasdair Diggle, Stephen P. Popat, Roman
author_sort	Scott-Phillips, Thomas C.
title	Combinatorial Communication in Bacteria: Implications for the Origins of Linguistic Generativity
title_short	Combinatorial Communication in Bacteria: Implications for the Origins of Linguistic Generativity
title_full	Combinatorial Communication in Bacteria: Implications for the Origins of Linguistic Generativity
title_fullStr	Combinatorial Communication in Bacteria: Implications for the Origins of Linguistic Generativity
title_full_unstemmed	Combinatorial Communication in Bacteria: Implications for the Origins of Linguistic Generativity
title_sort	combinatorial communication in bacteria: implications for the origins of linguistic generativity
description	Combinatorial communication, in which two signals are used together to achieve an effect that is different to the sum of the effects of the component parts, is apparently rare in nature: it is ubiquitous in human language, appears to exist in a simple form in some non-human primates, but has not been demonstrated in other species. This observed distribution has led to the pair of related suggestions, that (i) these differences in the complexity of observed communication systems reflect cognitive differences between species; and (ii) that the combinations we see in non-human primates may be evolutionary pre-cursors of human language. Here we replicate the landmark experiments on combinatorial communication in non-human primates, but in an entirely different species, unrelated to humans, and with no higher cognition: the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Using the same general methods as the primate studies, we find the same general pattern of results: the effect of the combined signal differs from the composite effect of the two individual signals. This suggests that advanced cognitive abilities and large brains do not necessarily explain why some species have combinatorial communication systems and others do not. We thus argue that it is premature to conclude that the systems observed in non-human primates are evolutionarily related to language. Our results illustrate the value of an extremely broad approach to comparative research.
publisher	Public Library of Science
publishDate	2014
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3997515/
_version_	1612081647376662528

Combinatorial Communication in Bacteria: Implications for the Origins of Linguistic Generativity

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