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Abstract

The performance of language is multimodal, not confined to speech. Review of monkey and apecommunication demonstrates greater flexibility in the use of hands and body than for vocalization.Nonetheless, the gestural repertoire of any group of nonhuman primates is small compared with thevocabulary of any human language and thus, presumably, of the transitional form called protolan-guage. We argue that it was the coupling of gestural communication with enhanced capacities forimitation that made possible the emergence of protosign to provide essential scaffolding for pro-tospeech in the evolution of protolanguage. Similarly, we argue against a direct evolutionary pathfrom nonhuman primate vocalization to human speech. The analysis refines aspects of the mirrorsystem hypothesis on the role of the primate brain’s mirror system for manual action in evolutionof the human language-ready brain.