Comparative Perspectives on Communication in Human and Non-Human Primates

Abstract

Comparative research on communication systems in human and non-human primates has struggled to find a common language for comparisons. Research has too often either embraced application of linguistic constructs to animal signals, or eschewed them altogether, with the result being either uncritical acceptance of continuity between human and animal communication, or wholesale dismissal of it. This chapter attempts to better align the discussion of communication in the two groups by highlighting the importance of low-level features of communication indisputably common to both. From this common starting point, the authors of this chapter invoke functional deployability as a critical pressure influencing signal structure and use, emphasizing conserved perceptuocognitive mechanisms as common targets of signal action. In recognizing these foundational building blocks, many productive avenues for future research open up. In particular, the authors suggest that perceptual and cognitive biases that promote certain types of signal-meaning mappings provide a natural, biosemantic substrate on which more robust communicative systems can be built.

Notions of arbitrariness

“…The second additional notion surfaces in various corners of the literature, including work on syntactic iconicity, sound symbolism, language typology, and “non‐functional” behavioral traditions in primates. On this notion, a sign‐function mapping can be characterized as arbitrary as long as it is not motivated by broader structural or adaptive factors (e.g., Croft, 2003; Givón, 2001; Haiman, 1983; Klamer, 2002; Nielsen & Dingemanse, 2021; Nielsen & Rendall, 2019). In Chapter 5 of his (1916), de Saussure himself proposed to view the level of arbitrariness of a word‐meaning mapping as an inverse function of how “motivated” (fr.…”

Iconicity in Word Learning and Beyond: A Critical Review

“…Humans are not the only animal to take advantage of iconic or otherwise motivated associations between the forms of signals and their meanings. Animal communication systems broadly have a pressure for functional deployability-the ability of signals to "do work" for the signaler (Krebs & Dawkins, 1984;Nielsen & Rendall, 2018). In some cases, this work involves the transfer of propositional content (information), while in other cases the work to be done refers to modulating the behavior of others (manipulation).…”