Inconsistent effects of components as evidence for non-compositionality in chimpanzee face-gesture combinations? A response to Oña et al (2019)

Abstract

Using field observations from a sanctuary, Oña and colleagues (DOI: 10.7717/peerj.7623) investigated the semantics of face-gesture combinations in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). The response of the animals to these signals was encoded as a binary measure: positive interactions such as approaching or grooming were considered affiliative; ignoring or attacking was considered non-affiliative. The relevant signals are illustrated in Fig. 1 (https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.7623/fig-1), together with the outcome in terms of average affiliativeness. The authors observe that there seems to be no systematicity in the way the faces modify the responses to the gestures, sometimes reducing affiliativeness, sometimes increasing it. A strong interpretation of this result would be that the meaning of a gesture-face combination cannot be derived from the meaning of the gesture and the meaning of the face, that is, the interpretation of chimpanzees’ face-gesture combinations are non compositional in nature. We will revisit this conclusion: we will exhibit simple compositional systems which, after all, may be plausible. At the methodological level, we argue that it is critical to lay out the theoretical options explicitly for a complete comparison of their pros and cons.