Lecture 19 Flashcards
Are emotions deeply rooted?
Yes and these emotions are conveyed through communication. As a result, many animals have a large and complex communicative repertoire.
Discuss human emotional behaviour
Our emotional behaviour is highly complex and often involves intentions. We can convey our emotions non-verbally in a sophisticated, efficient and effective way. However, this is still rudimentary compared to our linguistic communication.
How can one measure the function of communicative behaviours in non-humans?
One needs to characterise types of calls by recording and coding them, allowing one to create a behavioural repertoire. For example, this has allowed us to understand that non-human primates’ vocalisations are limited to specific contexts, unlike humans. However, there is still some flexibility in terms of variations in morph and variations in populations.
One can also test for responses by playing back their calls and seeing how they respond. This has allowed us to theorise the idea of gibbons singing to attract a female and monogamous couples singing duets.
It is important to note that you should avoid calling animal communication language as it is not language.
Discuss comparing human communication to non-human communication
Human communication involves both language and non-verbal communication, whereas non-human animals mainly communicate non-verbally. Furthermore, humans have some unique abilities involving non-verbal communication but there are similarities among us and other species, which can be explained phylogenetically. Exploring analogous communication systems is essential as it could inform us how human language evolved.
Discuss how non-human primate research has helped improve our understanding of human language
(Long answer)
Non-human primates also produce vocalisations so language may have evolved from this. For example, primates have referential calls. Vervet monkeys make calls to warn the group about a specific type of predator. Furthermore, chimps respond to specific food calls. For example, if you say bread, they will go to a specific tree where bread is. Chimps and bonobos are often researched as they are both closely related to humans. Neither species is more closely related, meaning they are equidistant to humans.
However, referential calls do not imply that there is meaning behind the calls, it could just be associative learning. This is where we can understand the differences between humans and non-human primates as we have meaning behind our ‘referential calls’. We are also able to create new signals and modify old ones to present new ideas.
Non-human primate research has also improved our understanding of human language as it has shown us how flexible our vocalisations are in comparison. For example, human infants can produce vocalisations that are independent from emotion. It has also informed us which vocalisations may have an older evolutionary origin. For example, laughter is not as flexible and is only used in specific contexts and is not independent from emotion, much like chimps’ vocalisations. Some studies have found that non-human primates have vocal flexibility as they are able to produce novel calls in order to get a human’s attention for food, which contrasts the point made earlier. Furthermore, there are differences in laughter across populations of chimps. This shows that although humans are more flexible with their communication, non-human primates are still somewhat flexible. However, the lack of flexibility that primates do have, informs us that it is unlikely that human language evolved from the same origin. Human flexibility is because humans’ larynx position is lower, allowing them to make more vocalisations than other primates.
From this, researchers began suggesting that human language evolved from gestures as they are used flexibly and free of context in both chimps and bonobos. Human language could have evolved from gestures much later on as it may have accompanied the gestures, which then developed more and more, explaining the flexibility of our language. Be wary of using the term intentionality for non-human animals. Furthermore, the fact that non-human primates and humans can learn gestures and non-verbal language suggests that it has an old evolutionary origin and that it developed before vocalisations.
Overall, different research methods have provided different input towards understanding the evolution of language, from observations to case studies to experiments, all of which being equally valuable.
Discuss Miyagawa’s study
They discuss how human language differs from other species and potentially shows how human language might have evolved. The integration hypothesis states that humans have evolved to combine expressive and lexical components of language to allow us to have flexible language. In comparison, birds only have expressive abilities, e.g. birdsong, and monkeys only have lexical abilities like referential alarm calls. Both of these are finite but when combined, it can give rise to much more complex language use. However, this could have been convergent evolution or they could just be similar properties but unrelated as other evidence has shown that human language probably evolved from gestures.
Discuss Friederici’s study
They found how the primate brain differs to the human brain, showing specifically where humans have evolved to become flexible and expressive in our language. It was found that the human brain has functional specificity in the posterior portion of the Broca’s area and that this area supports the structural hierarchy in our language. However, primates do not have this neural circuit which would explain why they struggle or are unable to produce complex syntactical language.
Discuss Watson’s study
It was previously thought that non-human primates’ referential communication was fixed in structure and was only a product of aroused states. However, Watson converged 2 groups of captive chimps and found that their referential food grunts also converged. Furthermore, this acoustic convergence occurred independently of food preference and convergence only occurred when strong affiliative bonds developed between the two groups. This provides evidence for primates being able to modify their vocalisations and that vocalisations can be socially learnt. This study also tells us that humans having socially learned referential calls might have a deeper evolutionary origin than was first thought and shows that primates can be more flexible in their vocalisations than was originally thought. Thus, language may have evolved from the somewhat flexible vocalisations of our common ancestor. However, it still seems unlikely because although the vocalisations can be adapted, there is still no presence of a complex hierarchical structure, showing that flexibility is still highly limited and that gestures are still much more flexible in primates.
Discuss Pollick’s study
They compared vocalisations and gestures in both chimps and bonobos; our equidistant relatives. It was found that the primates had almost double the amount of gestures compared to vocalisations. The vocalisations were used very similarly among the two species but gestures varied enormously both within and between species. This highlights the flexibility of gestural use and shows how this flexibility might have been present in our common ancestor, but humans developed language alongside gestures as multimodal communication.
Discuss Cartmill’s study
They discuss the evolution of language in humans. Humans have representational gestures unlike non-human primates and when exploring mirror neurons, non-human primates do not respond to representational gestures whereas humans do. Therefore, it is argued that human gestures are our mental representations in action and originally gestures played a crucial role in the transition to symbolic thought. This cognitive leap makes it clear how gestures becoming symbolic could have developed into language via multimodal communication.
