...form seems to be unique but similar processes found in other animals (and there is of course debate about how ostensive-inferential communication works in humans and other animals)

The combination is an important part of what makes language language - and likely a number of things like iconicity and social and cultural processes are uniquely developed in humans - but again also lots of evolutionary and species continuity. Ostensive-inferential communication in its human...

No, they are more like areas that spotlight important points of comparison with other animal communication systems. I'd say all of them can potentially be found at least in some form in non human animal communication and cognition. eg lots of animal communication is multimodal.

We hope this paper leads to renewed discussions and can provide a roadmap for future research comparing human language and non-human animal communication and for the study of language evolution.
Full paper here: doi.org/10.1016/j.ti...
Press release: www.mpi.nl/news/65-year...

Lots more cool stuff in the paper, such as discussions about "how do people define language?", "what about LLMs?" "what are the takeaways for comparisons of human language and other animal communication systems?" (8)

(3) language is not static, it is dynamic. In fact, many of its design features emerge out of a cultural process of transmission and interaction. Central to language is our capacity for ostension/inference, the human capacity to turn basically anything into a communicative act (7)

(2) language isn't just a code senders use to transmit information. It is grounded in social processes, pragmatics, & dynamic meaning-making. It is also a form of social signalling (e.g. people use your accent to make inferences about where you are from & your social status) (6)

(1) language is profoundly multimodal. Spoken language, e.g., is tightly integrated with gesture and other body movements. Language also exhibits modality flexibility, it can be spoken, or signed, or based on touch, such as in Protactile. It also features a lot of iconicity (5)

For these reasons, our understanding of language looks fundamentally different today compared to back then. In particular we highlight three major areas:
(1) Multimodality and semiotic diversity
(2) The functions of language
(3) Language as an adaptive system (4)

However, in the 65 years since Hockett's landmark publication a lot has happened in the language sciences, cognitive sciences, animal communication research and other fields. For instance, animal communication is much more complex than was appreciated in Hockett's time (3)

For example, a 2023 study found that his design features are still frequently mentioned in introductory textbooks, and they still are the go-to comparative framework in many approaches, linguistics intro classes and popular science treatments (2) doi.org/10.1093/jole...

In a famous 1960 publication (and a number of others) Charles Hockett described 13 "design features of language", which taken together differentiate language from animal communication systems (and other systems like music). His design features approach was hugely influential (1)

Data on extant species can offer insights for inferring ancient cognition but also faces limitations, theoretical and methodologically, but also in terms of interdisciplinary integration because they operate with different concepts.

In this paper, we assess to what extent experimental insights from extant species such as humans and great apes can be applied to extinct ones. We describe the role of experiments in comparative psychology, cognitive archaeology & experimental semiotics and what they can tell us.