© Gary Ramage / Newspix / Rex FeaturesHe may not be conjugating Latin verbs, but this cotton-topped tamarin can remember some simple grammar
Primates can intuitively recognise some rules of grammar, according to a study of cotton-topped tamarin monkeys (
Saguinus oedipus).
The findings do not mean primates can communicate using language, but they do suggest that some of the skills required to use language may be linked to very basic memory functions.
One grammatical structure that is found across many languages is affixation: the addition of syllables, either at the beginning or at the end of a word, to modify its meaning.
For instance, in English, the suffix " - ed" is added to verbs to make the past tense. In German, the same effect is achieved by adding the prefix "ge - " to the front of verb stems.
Ansgar Endress and colleagues at Harvard University thought that, because this structure is found in so many languages, it might be linked to basic memory functions that are independent of language. If they could prove this was true, it would suggest ways that children might be learning grammatical structures.
Comment: A bit of spin, not necessarily for global warming per se, but for diverting attention from the opposite of "regularity and occasional abruptness of global warming", that is a new Ice Age. Nicely done.
The fact is, Earth's climate is in a constant state of flux, of which we can observe only a small part: What everyone avoids saying is that the climate can switch back equally fast. Just think about flash-frozen mammoths.