Isaac Schamberg, Martin Surbeck, Simon W. Townsend
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
The arbitrary relationship between signifier and signified is one of the features responsible for language’s extreme lability, adaptability, and expressiveness. Understanding this arbitrariness and its emergence is essential in any account of the evolution of language. To shed light on the phylogeny of the phenomenon, comparative data examining the relationship between signal form and function in the communication systems of non-humans is central. Here we report the results of a study on the production and usage the whistle-high hoot call combination (W + HH) from two distant populations of wild bonobos (Pan paniscus): Lui Kotale, DRC, and Kokolopori, DRC. We find that the context in which bonobos produce the W + HHs varies systematically between populations. Our results suggest that variation in W + HH production may represent an example of signal-adjustment optionality, a key component of arbitrariness.
期刊介绍：
Animal Cognition is an interdisciplinary journal offering current research from many disciplines (ethology, behavioral ecology, animal behavior and learning, cognitive sciences, comparative psychology and evolutionary psychology) on all aspects of animal (and human) cognition in an evolutionary framework.
Animal Cognition publishes original empirical and theoretical work, reviews, methods papers, short communications and correspondence on the mechanisms and evolution of biologically rooted cognitive-intellectual structures.
The journal explores animal time perception and use; causality detection; innate reaction patterns and innate bases of learning; numerical competence and frequency expectancies; symbol use; communication; problem solving, animal thinking and use of tools, and the modularity of the mind.
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