%0 Journal Article
%A Pika, Simone
%A Wilkinson, Ray
%A Kendrick, Kobin H.
%A Vernes, Sonja C.
%+ Department of Primatology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Max Planck Society
%T Taking turns: Bridging the gap between human and animal communication :
%G eng
%U https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0001-7751-E
%R 10.1098/rspb.2018.0598
%7 2018-06-06
%D 2018
%8 13.06.2018
%* Review method: peer-reviewed
%X Language, humans’ most distinctive trait, still remains a ‘mystery’ for
evolutionary theory. It is underpinned by a universal infrastructure—
cooperative turn-taking—which has been suggested as an ancient mechanism
bridging the existing gap between the articulate human species and their
inarticulate primate cousins. However, we know remarkably little about
turn-taking systems of non-human animals, and methodological confounds
have often prevented meaningful cross-species comparisons. Thus, the
extent to which cooperative turn-taking is uniquely human or represents a
homologous and/or analogous trait is currently unknown. The present
paper draws attention to this promising research avenue by providing an over-
view of the state of the art of turn-taking in four animal taxa—birds, mammals,
insects and anurans. It concludes with a new comparative framework to spur
more research into this research domain and to test which elements of the
human turn-taking system are shared across species and taxa.
%K human language, language evolution,
animal communication, turn-taking,
duets, antiphony
%J Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
%V 285
%N 1880
%] 20180598
%I Royal Society
%C London
%@ 0962-8452