An international team proposes replacing Hockett’s feature checklist with a model of language as a dynamic, multimodal, and socially evolving system.

New research suggests wild chimpanzees have developed a far more nuanced communication system than previously realized, using several mechanisms that combine their vocalizations to create new meaning.

In a re-evaluation of Hockett’s foundational features that have long dominated linguistic theory—concepts like ‘arbitrariness’, ‘duality of patterning’, and ‘displacement’—an international team of ...