Is there any intermediate stage between animal communication and language?
Animal communication and human language have fundamental differences in their structures and functions. Furthermore, there is no living species demonstrating an intermediate stage of language evolution. Thus, we have difficulty in finding characteristics attributable to a communication system which can already be considered as a starting point for linguistic evolution. However, some findings coming from neurolinguistic research give us the opportunity to suppose that varying and arranging linguistic elements can be detached from other grammatical functions. Further information in this direction comes from apes’ language-teaching experiments; namely bonobos (Pan paniscus) are able to understand and produce differences in meaning by varying word arrangements. Based on these results one can suppose that an acoustic signal system, which possesses discrete units for variable use, might be very ancient and might exist independent and prior to a more advanced language state. In the natural se
