To shed light on the evolution of language, it is essential to identify similarities and differences in the communicative abilities of monkeys and apes (hereafter 'primates') and humans. The key finding is that there is a fundamental asymmetry in the perception and comprehension of sounds on the one hand, and the production of sounds on the other. Primates are able to perceive fine-grained variation in sounds and attach meaning to them. Unlike humans, however, primates are unable to imitate sounds or to incorporate novel sounds into their vocal repertoire. Moreover, it appears that primates have no intentions to inform others about ongoing events, and that they do not attribute knowledge to their group mates. Despite the fact that primates live in complex social systems and have rich representations of the world they live in, this is not mirrored in their communication system. This raises the question whether and to which degree primate vocal communication differs from that of other socially living mammals. With the aid of behavioural observations, playback experiments and a suite of experimental paradigms adopted from child development studies , we focus on the following topics: (1) ontogeny of communicative abilities in different communicative domains (vocal and gestural); (2) the effects of social learning on the acquisition of signal usage and comprehension (Fig.1). Our broader interest is in the cognitive underpinnings of communication in general.