From sharing food to sharing information: Cooperative breeding and language evolution

Burkart, Judith; Guerreiro Martins, Eloisa; Miss, Fabia; Zürcher, Yvonne

doi:10.5167/uzh-151866

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Burkart, J., Guerreiro Martins, E., Miss, F., & Zürcher, Y. (2018). From sharing food to sharing information: Cooperative breeding and language evolution. Interaction Studies : Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systems, 19, 136–150. https://doi.org/10.1075/is.17026.bur

Abstract

Language is a cognitively demanding human trait, but it is also a fundamentally cooperative enterprise that rests on the motivation to share information. Great apes possess many of the cognitive prerequisites for language, but largely lack the motivation to share information. Callitrichids (including marmosets and tamarins) are highly vocal monkeys that are more distantly related to humans than great apes are, but like humans, they are cooperative breeders and all group members help raising offspring. Among primates, this rearing syst