From Anthea Fraser Gupta, School of English, University of Leeds
Rowan Hooper reports Kazuo Okanoyo as saying that gestures don’t have grammar (5 May, p 7), and as regSards the chimps and bonobos he was referring to this is likely, though by no means certain, to be true.
But human gestures certainly can have grammar. There are many languages based on gesture, notably various sign languages, and these have grammar just as complex as that of speech-based languages. Speech is not essential for language.
Leeds, UK
