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Behavioral Assessment of Manual Dexterity in Non-Human Primates
Published on: November 11, 2011
What Do Monkey Calls Mean?
Philippe Schlenker1, Emmanuel Chemla2, Klaus Zuberbühler3
1Institut 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.
Abstract:
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.
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