Primate Vocal Communication: A Useful Tool for Understanding Human Speech and Language Evolution? (original) (raw)
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Evolution of Primate Vocal-Auditory Communication Systems
American Anthropologist, 1968
One way of tracing the evolution of language is to (1) reduce language to its structural components or dwign-jeatures, (2) discover to what extent these design-features are present in the communicatimz of nonhuman primates, and (3) attempt to establish the brain structures that mediate linguistic behavior in man and the extenl to which such structures can mediate simiJar behavior in nonhuman pimates. It is also important to delineate those anatomical mechanisms that are prerequisites for language from those that are later adaptations. Human peculiarities of the auditory system, vocal tract, and motor system are better explained as the resdt of feedback from an evolving linguistic code than as necessary prerequisites for language. The abilities to engage in sequential behavior and to form nonlimbic, cross-modal associa
Primate communication, comparative neurology, and the origin of language re-examined
Journal of Human Evolution, 1985
The view that non-human primates lack significant voluntary control over their vocalizations and that their vocalizations lack propositional, referential, or symbolic qualities has been a persistent one, especially among those who have examined the evolutionary origin of human speech. This view would seem to favor proposals of human language having originated in the form of manual gesture, a modality that in non-human primates appears to be subject to greater voluntary control. Recent field and laboratory investigations of the information conveyed in the natural vocalization system of primates and comparative neurological data, however, point to important similarities between the vocalization system of non-human primates and human speech. In particular, use of innovative methodology such as the "playback" technique has shown in several New and Old World monkey species that calls convey more than the sender's emotionalmotivational state, including also information about the sender's sex, group membership, and social relationships. In some species, calls apparently also have semantic qualities, in that they encode specific information about external objects or events, and there is evidence that the decoding of calls may be governed by simple syntactical rules and that perceptual mechanisms similar to those in human speech may be employed. This structural and functional complexity of calls is also reflected at the level of governing neural mechanisms. Not only is there strong evidence for volitional components in calls and the involvement of neocortical mechanisms, but there may also be a differentiation of neural control mechanisms according to call type. Furthermore, in some species hemispheric asymmetries exist in auditory perception and perhaps also production of calls. Despite the absence of significant neurobiological data from apes, these data suggest that the vocal-auditory machinery of the earliest hominids was far more ready to take on "primordial" speech functions than has been previously supposed.
Primate Vocalization, Gesture, and the Evolution of Human Language
Current Anthropology, 2008
The performance of language is multimodal, not confined to speech. Review of monkey and ape communication demonstrates greater flexibility in the use of hands and body than for vocalization. Nonetheless, the gestural repertoire of any group of nonhuman primates is small compared with the vocabulary of any human language and thus, presumably, of the transitional form called protolanguage. We argue that it was the coupling of gestural communication with enhanced capacities for imitation that made possible the emergence of protosign to provide essential scaffolding for protospeech in the evolution of protolanguage. Similarly, we argue against a direct evolutionary path from nonhuman primate vocalization to human speech. The analysis refines aspects of the mirror system hypothesis on the role of the primate brain's mirror system for manual action in evolution of the human language-ready brain.
Key issues in the study of primate acoustic signals, an update
2010
In our earlier review (Gamba & Giacoma, 2005), we highlighted the fact that studies of non-human primate vocal communication would benefit greatly from an in-depth study of phonation processes, and that anatomical evidence from investigations of the vocal apparatus should be considered. This is crucial from the perspective of the evolution of language and would allow an understanding of whether other species can voluntarily produce “new” calls using different combinations of vocal tract configurations, temporal and fundamental frequency patterns, or if they are unable to do so, due to genetic constraints on their communicative abilities. From a behavioural perspective, these communicative abilities can also help in the interpretation of acoustic variability, for instance when similar vocalisations are used in different contexts. In the past few years, studies on primate vocal communication have made several advances, increasing our knowledge of the role played by acoustic variation ...
Primate Communication and the Gestural Origin of Language
Current Anthropology, 1992
In a recent paper (1971b), I deal with this matter at length. Holloway (1969) has also discussed this issue extensively, but within the framework of a model which assumes that language was vocal from the beginning (cf. Crombie 1971 for a related effort).
2018
Comparative perspectives on primate and human communication have been marked by two equally untenable extremes: either language is special, without significant evolutionary precedent, or it is not: it is continuous in most aspects with animal communication systems. In this article we outline fertile common ground and point towards synthetic approaches that can unify the study of human and animal communication. First, we suggest that humans have a large suite of perceptual biases that introduce a pressure for languages to be 'functionally deployable'. We suggest that human languages are shaped by this pressure, along with previously established pressures to be both learnable and compressible, and domain-general constraints like memory. Collectively, we suggest that non-arbitrary structure-function relationships are crucial for the deployment of language and communication systems more generally.
The evolution of speech: a comparative review
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2000
The evolution of speech can be studied independently of the evolution of language, with the advantage that most aspects of speech acoustics, physiology and neural control are shared with animals, and thus open to empirical investigation. At least two changes were necessary prerequisites for modern human speech abilities: (1) modification of vocal tract morphology, and (2) development of vocal imitative ability. Despite an extensive literature, attempts to pinpoint the timing of these changes using fossil data have proven inconclusive. However, recent comparative data from nonhuman primates have shed light on the ancestral use of formants (a crucial cue in human speech) to identify individuals and gauge body size. Second, comparative analysis of the diverse vertebrates that have evolved vocal imitation (humans, cetaceans, seals and birds) provides several distinct, testable hypotheses about the adaptive function of vocal mimicry. These developments suggest that, for understanding the evolution of speech, comparative analysis of living species provides a viable alternative to fossil data. However, the neural basis for vocal mimicry and for mimesis in general remains unknown. tel: ϩ1 617 496 6575 fax: ϩ1 617 496 8355 References 1 Ralls, K. et al. (1985) Vocalizations and vocal mimicry in captive harbor seals: 6 Corballis, M. (1992) On the evolution of language and generativity. Cognition 44, 197-226 7 Jackendoff, R. (1999) Possible stages in the evolution of the language capacity. Trends Cognit. Sci. 3, 272-279 8 Ghazanfar, A.A. and Hauser, M.D. (1999) The neuroethology of primate vocal communication: substrates for the evolution of speech.
The Evolution of Language - Proceedings of the 6th International Conference (EVOLANG6), 2006
Studies of animal communication systems are essential to understand the evolution of human language. The majority of research focused on vocal communication. Recent studies however provide evidence that gestural signaling plays an important role in the communication of apes and resembles that of prelinguistic and just-linguistic human infants in some important ways. However, ape gestures also differ from the gestures of human infants in some important ways as well, and these differences might provide crucial clues for answering the question of how human language-at least in its cognitive and social-cognitive aspects-evolved from the gestural communication of our ape-like ancestors. The present manuscript summarizes and compares recent studies on the gestural signaling of the great apes (Gorilla gorilla, Pan paniscus, Pan troglodytes, Pongo pygmaeus) to enable a comparison with gestures in children. We focused on the three following aspects: 1) nature of gestures, 2) intentional use of gestures, 3) and learning of gestures. Our results show, that apes have multifaceted gestural repertoires and use their gestures intentionally. Although some group-specific gestures seem to be acquired via a social learning process, the majority of gestures are learned via individual learning. Importantly, all of the intentional produced gestures share two important characteristics that make them crucially different from human deictic and symbolic gestures: 1) they are almost invariably used in dyadic contexts, and 2) they are used exclusively for imperative purposes. Implications for these differences are discussed. One of the enduring questions of the Western intellectual traditions is how spoken language, which is thought to be unique to humans, originated and evolved. One important way to address this question is to compare speech to the systems of vocal communication evolved in other animals, especially in nonhuman primates (hereafter primates) (e.g.
Where Apes and Songbirds are Left Behind: A Comparative Assessment of the Requisites for Speech
Comparative Cognition & Behavior Reviews, 2014
A handful of mammalian and avian species can imitate speech (i.e., sounds perceived by humans as those comprising the human communication system of language). Of those species, even fewer are capable of using speech to communicate. While there has been no empirical comparison of nonhuman speech users, parrots are presumed to be the most prolific. In this review, we identify several anatomical, neurological, and sociobiological features shared by parrots and humans that could account for why parrots might emerge as the most advanced nonhuman speech users. Apes and temperate oscine songbirds, due to their phylogenetic similarity to humans and parrots, respectively, are also included in the comparison. We argue that while all four taxa share hemispheric asymmetry of communication areas and basic sociality, humans and parrots share three additional features that are not completely present in apes and songbirds. Specifically, apes, unlike songbirds, parrots, and humans, are not considered vocal learners and do not have sufficient respiratory control to support a speech stream, while parrots, humans, and apes demonstrate complex affiliative social behavior. Along with the above anatomical, neurological, and sociobiological traits, parrots' affiliative long-term relationships, similar to that of humans, may help explain both groups' ability to produce and use a wide variety of sounds. Thus, this paper extends parrot-human cognitive comparisons by introducing another similarity-that of complex affiliative relationships-as a possible explanation for why parrots can produce and use speech to communicate.