Shifting Meaning in Gorilla Gestures: A Look into Evolutionary Linguistics

Location

SU-214

Department

Linguistics

Abstract

This presentation, based on thesis research, analyzes the ability for wild gorillas to demonstrate semantic shift in their gestural communications. Semantic shift, a change in meaning of a word while maintaining its sound, is a common characteristic of human languages. An example of semantic shift in English is the term ‘awful.’ Originally, the term roughly meant ‘full of awe/wonder,’ but it has shifted in Modern English to mean ‘terrible/extremely bad.’ I present evidence from primatological and linguistic literature that wild gorillas have to capacity to engage in semantic shift in their communicative gestures. Building especially off the work of recent research supporting the discovery of wild chimpanzees to demonstrate semantic shift, I point to various observed behaviors of gorillas in natural conditions as well as in captivity that point to at least gorillas’ cognitive capacity to perform semantic shift and, more assertively, that semantic shift has indeed occurred. Since semantic shift has been observed in chimpanzees, and to the degree that semantic shift is a deep property of language, the research thus posits languagelike semantic capacity from being present from some 6 million years ago to about 10 million years ago, significantly pushing back evolutionary evidence of this linguistic and cognitive skill.

Faculty Sponsor

Lewis Gebhardt, Northeastern Illinois University

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Apr 28th, 11:40 AM

Shifting Meaning in Gorilla Gestures: A Look into Evolutionary Linguistics

SU-214

This presentation, based on thesis research, analyzes the ability for wild gorillas to demonstrate semantic shift in their gestural communications. Semantic shift, a change in meaning of a word while maintaining its sound, is a common characteristic of human languages. An example of semantic shift in English is the term ‘awful.’ Originally, the term roughly meant ‘full of awe/wonder,’ but it has shifted in Modern English to mean ‘terrible/extremely bad.’ I present evidence from primatological and linguistic literature that wild gorillas have to capacity to engage in semantic shift in their communicative gestures. Building especially off the work of recent research supporting the discovery of wild chimpanzees to demonstrate semantic shift, I point to various observed behaviors of gorillas in natural conditions as well as in captivity that point to at least gorillas’ cognitive capacity to perform semantic shift and, more assertively, that semantic shift has indeed occurred. Since semantic shift has been observed in chimpanzees, and to the degree that semantic shift is a deep property of language, the research thus posits languagelike semantic capacity from being present from some 6 million years ago to about 10 million years ago, significantly pushing back evolutionary evidence of this linguistic and cognitive skill.