This project is part of a multi-disciplinary project (GRAMBY - The Grammar of the Body) in which we aim to reveal the foundations of
compositionality in human language. Compositionality is a fundamental principle of language structure, according to which the
meanings of complex expressions are determined by the meanings of their constituents and the way in which they combine (e.g.
Jackendoff, 2011). The GRAMBY framework is inspired by sign language, in which different components of language are signalled by the hands, face and body (Sandler, 2012). This paradigm is taken a step further by investigating a more basic level of human communication:
the expression of extreme emotion by different parts of the face and body (Cavicchio & Sandler, 2015).
It has been shown clearly that communication in our closest living relatives, the great apes, is multimodal (Liebal et al., 2014). However, it is not known how signals from different modalities (face, hands, body) combine. In this project, we seek precursors of linguistic compositionality in the emotional and communicative bodily signals of chimpanzees.
Our hypothesis is that the compositionality of embodied emotional communication played a role in the evolution of the compositionality of language
