Animal Linguistics: A Primer

The question of the evolution of language is investigated by several research communities (including biologists and linguists) that strive to highlight similar linguistic capacities across species. So far though, no consensus exists on linguistic capacities of nonhuman species. The major contentions are on the misuse of linguistic terminology, irrelevance of analysis methods and inappropriate behavioural data collection. The field of ‘animal linguistics’ has emerged to overcome these difficulties and attempt to reach unique methods and terminology. This primer is a tutorial review of ‘animal linguistics’. It exposes the linguistic theoretical concepts of semantics, pragmatics and syntax, and proposes the minimal criteria that are to be fulfilled to claim that a given species displays a given linguistic capacity. Second, it reviews relevant methods successfully applied to the study of animal data, and proposes a list of useful references to detect and overcome major pitfalls commonly observed in the collection of animal behaviour data. This primer represents a milestone towards mutual understanding and fruitful collaborations between linguists and biologists.