ABSTRACT
Language is considered a cornerstone of human communication. Our productive capacity to flexibly communicate ever new information is often argued to distinguish us from other animals and their comparably fixed vocal repertoires. Yet, research over the last decade has revealed intriguing human-animal parallels in the way information is encoded and transferred, demonstrating that neither the ability to flexibly communicate meaningful information, nor the ability to combine sounds or signals to create more diverse messages is unique to human language. In this chapter, we discuss recent research findings on non-human animals, bridging the gap between human language and animal communication.
