CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS ARTICLE
Front. Psychol., 03 September 2019
Systems Underlying Human and Old World Monkey Communication: One, Two, or Infinite
Shigeru Miyagawa1,2* and Esther Clarke1,3
1Linguistics and Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States
2Office of Open Learning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States
3Behavioral Ecology and Evolution Research (BEER) Group, Durham University, Durham, United Kingdom
Source/Fonte: MIT News
Abstract
Using artificially synthesized stimuli, previous research has shown that cotton-top tamarin monkeys easily learn simple AB grammar sequences, but not the more complex AnBn sequences that require hierarchical structure. Humans have no trouble learning AnBn combinations. A more recent study, using similar artificially created stimuli, showed that there is a neuroanatomical difference in the brain between these two kinds of arrays. While the simpler AB sequences recruit the frontal operculum, the AnBn array recruits the phylogenetically newer Broca’s area. We propose that on close inspection, reported vocal repertoires of Old World Monkeys show that these nonhuman primates are capable of calls that have two items in them, but never more than two. These are simple AB sequences, as predicted by previous research. In addition, we suggest the two-item call cannot be the result of a combinatorial operation that we see in human language, where the recursive operation of Merge allows for a potentially infinite array of structures. In our view, the two-item calls of nonhuman primates result from a dual-compartment frame into which each of the calls can fit without having to be combined by an operation such as Merge.
FREE PDF GRATIS: Frontiers in Psychology
