The place of language in multimodal communication in humans and other primates

Abstract

Much attention has been paid to ways in which different categories of individual combine different modalities to communicate meanings to others. One major challenge that remains is to gain a deeper understanding of the cognitive processing responsible for the simultaneous deployment and integration of various different resources during multimodal communication. In response to this challenge, a Modular Cognition Framework analysis will be applied to the question of how people communicate using all the resources at their disposal. The discussion will include relevant features of this framework. Then research into similarities between humans and chimpanzee communication will be discussed followed by a comparison between verbal and non- verbal communication and a consideration of a distinct but similar approach. Emphasis will be placed on the role of meaning and on synergies between the conceptual system and the two systems responsible for linguistic structure.