However, the interpretation and linguistic relevance of these capacities remains heavily debated (see, for example, Hauser et al., 2002 Scott-Phillips, 2015 b Schlenker et al., 2016 b Suzuki, Wheatcroft & Griesser, 2018 Bolhuis et al., 2018). In recent years, significant progress has been made in understanding communicative abilities across a number of species (e.g. birds) can help us to understand the selective pressures that acted on our ancestors and favoured the evolution of human communication as it exists today (Fitch, 2015). Studies on phylogenetically more distant species (e.g. non-human primates) can therefore be studied to understand the evolutionary history of a human capacity. Species that are phylogenetically close to us (e.g. This leads to the identification of homologies (traits inherited from a common ancestor) or analogies (traits that fulfil a similar function, but which have evolved independently). The phylogenetic distribution of each individual component can then be investigated, by comparing communicative capacities across species (Hauser et al., 2002). To answer this question, one fruitful strategy is to break human language down into various component abilities (Hauser, Chomsky & Fitch, 2002 Fitch, 2005). How language evolved is a long-standing question in science (Christiansen & Kirby, 2003). This primer represents a step towards mutual understanding and fruitful collaborations between linguists and biologists. Second, it reviews relevant methods successfully applied to the study of communication in animals and proposes a list of useful references to detect and overcome major pitfalls commonly observed in the collection of animal behaviour data. It describes the linguistic concepts of semantics, pragmatics and syntax, and proposes minimal criteria to be fulfilled to claim that a given species displays a particular linguistic capacity. This primer is a tutorial review of ‘animal linguistics’. The field of ‘animal linguistics’ has emerged to overcome these difficulties and attempt to reach uniform methods and terminology. Major controversies remain on the use of linguistic terminology, analysis methods and behavioural data collection. To date, however, no consensus exists on the linguistic capacities of non-human species. The evolution of language has been investigated by several research communities, including biologists and linguists, striving to highlight similar linguistic capacities across species.
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