Table 1.

Terms and definitions of different types of sound combinations used in animal communication research (non-bold type) and in linguistics (bold). In the visual representation, the circles of different colours on the left represent the different sounds to be combined, they can either have a meaning (represented by a letter as in the case of lexical syntax) or they can have no meaning. On the right, the series of circles represent call combinations that can have a meaning that is function of the meaning of its parts (e.g. A + B), no meaning or a new meaning (e.g. X).