Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 610):
It has been found that, among the higher primates, those species that live in social groups have more complex brain structures, other things being equal, than those that live apart as individuals (Dunbar, 1992, quoted in New Scientist ). This, too, is something which resonates with our interpretation with language. In our account of the ideation base, we have stressed the interactive, dialogic nature of the construal of experience. But we have also stressed that the ideation base is only one component of the total semantic resource: as well as construing our experience in language, we also use it to enact our interpersonal relationships. Because we are social animals, there is an added dimension of meaning for language to cope with.
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Dunbar's claim is actually that primate group size is constrained by neocortex size. However, among the monkeys, geladas live in groups of 1200, despite having a similar sized neocortex to comparable monkeys living in much smaller groups, and contrariwise, among the apes, orangutans live largely solitary lives, despite having a larger neocortex than the more social gibbons, and a similar sized neocortex to the far more social chimpanzees and gorillas. Moreover, the group size of the same species can vary considerably depending on habitat, as demonstrated by the much larger group size of langurs living in urban environments compared to those living in forests.