What Do Monkey Calls Mean?
A field of primate linguistics is gradually emerging. It combines general questions and tools from theoretical linguistics with rich data gathered in experimental primatology. Analyses of several monkey systems have uncovered very simple morphological and syntactic rules and have led to the development of a primate semantics that asks new questions about the division of semantic labor between the literal meaning of monkey calls, additional mechanisms of pragmatic enrichment, and the environmental context. We show that comparative studies across species may validate this program and may in some cases help in reconstructing the evolution of monkey communication over millions of years.
Institut Jean-Nicod (ENS-EHESS-CNRS), Département d'Etudes Cognitives, Ecole Normale Supérieure - PSL Research University, Paris, France; Department of Linguistics, New York University, New York, NY, USA. Electronic address: Philippe.Schlenker@gmail.com.
Philippe
P
Schlenker
Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique (ENS-EHESS-CNRS), Département d'Etudes Cognitives, Ecole Normale Supérieure - PSL Research University, Paris, France.
Emmanuel
E
Chemla
School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Mary's Quad, St Andrews, UK; Centre for Cognitive Science, University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
Klaus
K
Zuberbühler
D000818:Animals; D003142:Communication; D000882:Haplorhini; D008037:Linguistics; D011323:Primates; D012660:Semantics; D014828:Vocalization, Animal
evolution of communication; evolution of meaning; primate call evolution; primate implicatures; primate linguistics; primate semantics