Phrases used to smooth over tense social situations have meanings beyond the sum of their parts, study suggests

Study of the calls that bonobos use to communicate indicates that their vocal system shows both trivial and non-trivial compositionality, the latter previously thought to occur only in human languages.

(Note: since The Guardian messed up their link to the research paper, I’m providing it here: Extensive compositionality in the vocal system of bonobos.)