Reacción a "The language of bonobos has characteristics that were previously thought to be exclusive to human beings, according to a study"

This study has many very interesting features. First it uses recording of bonobos verbalization in the wild, and analyzes them together with recorded and annotated behaviours. The objective is simple, but the endeavour is difficult. It aims at two birds with the same stone: checking whether "words combinations" yield more meaning than the simple addition of the words, and, by achieving this, to better understand the meaning of single words. Words, in this case, should not be considered as humans words but rather as clearly identifiable verbalizations by the bonobo. According to the analysis reported in the manuscript, the meaning of "sentences" resulting from two sounds performed consecutively is more than the simple addition of the meaning of each sound.

This finding, if valid, is fundamental importance as it is currently largely believed that this combinatorial aspect is unique to human language: it suggests its premises are present in some of our closest evolutionary relatives, a species of African great apes. 

The evidence is quite indirect and sketchy. Scientists recorded and tabulated behaviours to objectify the context in which single verbal occurrence took place, in a framework called "distributional semantics". It relies on the identification of features associated with single calls as "vectors" in a semantic space, that is then used to calculate distance between these features associated with certain calls. The main concern with such approach is that these features are considered from a human point of view, and may not map perfectly with inner states or thoughts of the ape, something the authors report as a possible limitation of the work with regards to the emotions not being recorded in this study. In other words, the approach is quite convincing but absolutely needs to be confirmed with other species and by other researchers to ensure that it is not the actual frame of reference used in this study that explains its results.

In summary, this research made it in a very high impact journal because it actually addresses a fundamental question about the origin and evolution of human language, yet I will for now consider it with a grain of salt until it is reproduced independently, even better in another species, to ensure both the methods and the results hold on the long term.