Language(syntax) found in Monkeys

[Zarquon]

Having spent months recording the monkeys’ calls in response to both natural and artificial stimuli, a group led by Klaus Zuberbühler of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland argues that the Campbell’s monkeys have a primitive form of syntax.
This is likely to be a controversial claim because despite extensive efforts to teach chimpanzees language, the subjects showed little or no ability to combine the sounds they learned into a sentence with a larger meaning. Syntax, basic to the structure of language, seemed be a uniquely human faculty.
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If the Zuberbühler team’s observations are correct, the Campbell’s monkeys can both vary the meaning of specific calls by adding suffixes and combine calls to generate a different meaning. Their call system, the researchers write, “may be the most complex example of ‘proto-syntax’ in animal communication known to date.”

Source (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/science/08monkey.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y)
Intriguing.
What else is left to justify our special status? Consciousness?

[Greendruid]

This is really strange considering that there are many, many examples of chimps and gorillas that demonstrate syntax, displacement and duality in their communication. All of these are limited and some individuals are better at it than others (as would be expected). Nonetheless, the monkeys have never really registered on this scale.

Regarding both language and culture, my official stance is this: While other apes are capable of cultural acts or parts of language, we are the ape that is utterly dependent on both of these. We are the cultural ape and cannot be human without culture or language. Our difference is in degree rather than in kind.

[Michael]

They don't call us the "third chimpanzee" for nothing! ;)

[Daktoria]

What is syntax?

Coherent systems of communication are in the eye ear of the beholder.