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Amphaeris J, Blumstein DT, Shannon G, Tenbrink T, Kershenbaum A. A multifaceted framework to establish the presence of meaning in non-human communication. Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc 2023; 98:1887-1909. [PMID: 37340613 DOI: 10.1111/brv.12989] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/09/2022] [Revised: 06/01/2023] [Accepted: 06/05/2023] [Indexed: 06/22/2023]
Abstract
Does non-human communication, like language, involve meaning? This question guides our focus through an interdisciplinary review of the theories and terminology used to study meaning across disciplines and species. Until now, it has been difficult to apply the concept of meaning to communication in non-humans. This is partly because of the varied approaches to the study of meaning. Additionally, while there is a scholarly acknowledgement of potential meaning in non-human cognition, there is also scepticism when the topic of communication arises. We organise some of the key literature into a coherent framework that can bridge disciplines and species, to ensure that aspects of meaning are accurately and fairly compared. We clarify the growing view in the literature that, rather than requiring multiple definitions or being split into different types, meaning is a multifaceted yet still unified concept. In so doing, we propose that meaning is an umbrella term. Meaning cannot be summed up with a short definition or list of features, but involves multiple complexities that are outlined in our framework. Specifically, three global facets are needed to describe meaning: a Signal Meaning Facet, an Interactant Meaning Facet, and a Resultant Meaning Facet. Most importantly, we show that such analyses are possible to apply as much to non-humans as to humans. We also emphasise that meaning nuances differ among non-human species, making a dichotomous approach to meaning questionable. Instead, we show that a multifaceted approach to meaning establishes how meaning appears within highly diverse examples of non-human communication, in ways consistent with the phenomenon's presence in human non-verbal communication and language(s). Therefore, without further recourse to 'functional' approaches that circumvent the critical question of whether any non-human meaning exists, we show that the concept of meaning is suitable for evolutionary biologists, behavioural ecologists, and others to study, to establish exactly which species exhibit meaning in their communication and in what ways.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jenny Amphaeris
- School of Arts, Culture, and Language, Bangor University, College Road, Bangor, LL57 2DG, UK
| | - Daniel T Blumstein
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, 621 Young Drive South, Los Angeles, CA, 90095-1606, USA
| | - Graeme Shannon
- School of Natural Sciences, Bangor University, College Road, Bangor, LL57 2DG, UK
| | - Thora Tenbrink
- School of Arts, Culture, and Language, Bangor University, College Road, Bangor, LL57 2DG, UK
| | - Arik Kershenbaum
- Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3EJ, UK
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Bortolato T, Friederici AD, Girard-Buttoz C, Wittig RM, Crockford C. Chimpanzees show the capacity to communicate about concomitant daily life events. iScience 2023; 26:108090. [PMID: 37876805 PMCID: PMC10590744 DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.108090] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/03/2023] [Revised: 06/03/2023] [Accepted: 09/26/2023] [Indexed: 10/26/2023] Open
Abstract
One universal feature of human language is its versatility in communicating about juxtapositions of everyday events. Versatile combinatorial systems of communication can be selected for if (a) several vocal units are flexibly combined into numerous and long vocal sequences and (b) vocal sequences relate to numerous daily life events. We propose (b) is more likely during simultaneous or serial (concomitant) events than single events. We analyzed 9,391 vocal utterances across the repertoire of wild chimpanzees and their events of production. Chimpanzees used vocal sequences across a range of daily life events and twice as often during concomitant than single events. Also, utterance diversity correlated positively with event diversity. Our results show the potential of chimpanzee vocal sequences to convey combined information about numerous daily life events, a step from which generalized combinatoriality could have evolved.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tatiana Bortolato
- The Ape Social Mind Lab, Institut des Sciences Cognitives, CNRS UMR 5229, Bron 69500, France
- Department of Human Behaviour, Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
- Taï Chimpanzee Project, Centre Suisse des Recherches Scientifiques, Abidjan 1303, Ivory Coast
| | - Angela D. Friederici
- Department of Neuropsychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive Sciences, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
| | - Cédric Girard-Buttoz
- The Ape Social Mind Lab, Institut des Sciences Cognitives, CNRS UMR 5229, Bron 69500, France
- Department of Human Behaviour, Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
- Taï Chimpanzee Project, Centre Suisse des Recherches Scientifiques, Abidjan 1303, Ivory Coast
| | - Roman M. Wittig
- The Ape Social Mind Lab, Institut des Sciences Cognitives, CNRS UMR 5229, Bron 69500, France
- Department of Human Behaviour, Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
- Taï Chimpanzee Project, Centre Suisse des Recherches Scientifiques, Abidjan 1303, Ivory Coast
| | - Catherine Crockford
- The Ape Social Mind Lab, Institut des Sciences Cognitives, CNRS UMR 5229, Bron 69500, France
- Department of Human Behaviour, Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
- Taï Chimpanzee Project, Centre Suisse des Recherches Scientifiques, Abidjan 1303, Ivory Coast
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Friederici AD. Evolutionary neuroanatomical expansion of Broca's region serving a human-specific function. Trends Neurosci 2023; 46:786-796. [PMID: 37596132 DOI: 10.1016/j.tins.2023.07.004] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/20/2023] [Revised: 06/23/2023] [Accepted: 07/20/2023] [Indexed: 08/20/2023]
Abstract
The question concerning the evolution of language is directly linked to the debate on whether language and action are dependent or not and to what extent Broca's region serves as a common neural basis. The debate resulted in two opposing views, one arguing for and one against the dependence of language and action mainly based on neuroscientific data. This article presents an evolutionary neuroanatomical framework which may offer a solution to this dispute. It is proposed that in humans, Broca's region houses language and action independently in spatially separated subregions. This became possible due to an evolutionary expansion of Broca's region in the human brain, which was not paralleled by a similar expansion in the chimpanzee's brain, providing additional space needed for the neural representation of language in humans.
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Affiliation(s)
- Angela D Friederici
- Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Department of Neuropsychology, Stephanstraße 1A, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
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Qadri MAJ, Cook RG. Learning and organization of within-session sequences by pigeons (Columba livia). Anim Cogn 2023; 26:1571-1587. [PMID: 37335435 DOI: 10.1007/s10071-023-01801-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/20/2023] [Revised: 05/31/2023] [Accepted: 06/06/2023] [Indexed: 06/21/2023]
Abstract
Most animals engage in complex activities that are the combination of simpler actions expressed over a period of time. The mechanisms organizing such sequential behavior have been of long-standing biological and psychological interest. Previously, we observed pigeons' anticipatory behavior with a within-session sequence involving four choice alternatives suggestive of a potential understanding of the overall order and sequence of the items within a session. In that task, each colored alternative was correct for 24 consecutive trials as presented in a predictable sequence (i.e., A first, then B, then C, then D). To test whether these four already-trained pigeons possessed a sequential and linked representation of the ABCD items, we added a second four-item sequence involving new and distinct colored choice alternatives (i.e., E first for 24 trials, then F, then G, then H) and then alternated these ABCD and EFGH sequences over successive sessions. Over three manipulations, we tested and trained trials composed of combinations of elements from both sequences. We determined that pigeons did not learn any within-sequence associations among the elements. Despite the availability and explicit utility of such sequence cues, the data suggest instead that pigeons learned the discrimination tasks as a series of temporal associations among independent elements. This absence of any sequential linkage is consistent with the hypothesis that such representations are difficult to form in pigeons. This pattern of data suggests that for repeated sequential activities in birds, and potentially other animals including humans, there are highly effective, but underappreciated, clock-like mechanisms that control the ordering of behaviors.
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Affiliation(s)
- Muhammad A J Qadri
- Department of Psychology, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA, USA.
| | - Robert G Cook
- Department of Psychology, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA
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Schlenker P, Coye C, Leroux M, Chemla E. The ABC-D of animal linguistics: are syntax and compositionality for real? Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc 2023; 98:1142-1159. [PMID: 36960599 DOI: 10.1111/brv.12944] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/12/2022] [Revised: 02/22/2023] [Accepted: 02/23/2023] [Indexed: 03/25/2023]
Abstract
In several animal species, an alarm call (e.g. ABC notes in the Japanese tit Parus minor) can be immediately followed by a recruitment call (e.g. D notes) to yield a complex call that triggers a third behaviour, namely mobbing. This has been taken to be an argument for animal syntax and compositionality (i.e. the property by which the meaning of a complex expression depends on the meaning of its parts and the way they are put together). Several additional discoveries were made across species. First, in some cases, animals respond with mobbing to the order alarm-recruitment but not to the order recruitment-alarm. Second, animals sometimes respond similarly to functionally analogous heterospecific calls they have never heard before, and/or to artificial hybrid sequences made of conspecific and heterospecific calls in the same order, thus adding an argument for the productivity of the relevant rules. We consider the details of these arguments for animal syntax and compositionality and argue that, with one important exception (Japanese tit ABC-D sequences), they currently remain ambiguous: there are reasonable alternatives on which each call is a separate utterance and is interpreted as such ('trivial compositionality'). More generally, we propose that future studies should argue for animal syntax and compositionality by explicitly pitting the target theory against two deflationary analyses: the 'only one expression' hypothesis posits that there is no combination in the first place, for example just a simplex ABCD call; while the 'separate utterances' hypothesis posits that there are separate expressions (e.g. ABC and D), but that they form separate utterances and are neither syntactically nor semantically combined.
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Affiliation(s)
- Philippe Schlenker
- Département d'Etudes Cognitives, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Institut Jean-Nicod (ENS - EHESS - CNRS), 29, rue d'Ulm, Paris, 75005, France
- PSL Research University, 60 Rue Mazarine, Paris, 75006, France
- Department of Linguistics, New York University, 10 Washington Place, New York, NY, 10003, USA
| | - Camille Coye
- Département d'Etudes Cognitives, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Institut Jean-Nicod (ENS - EHESS - CNRS), 29, rue d'Ulm, Paris, 75005, France
- PSL Research University, 60 Rue Mazarine, Paris, 75006, France
| | - Maël Leroux
- Department of Comparative Language Science, University of Zürich, Affolternstrasse 56, Zürich, CH-8050, Switzerland
- Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution (ISLE), University of Zürich, Affolternstrasse 56, Zürich, CH-8050, Switzerland
| | - Emmanuel Chemla
- PSL Research University, 60 Rue Mazarine, Paris, 75006, France
- LSCP (ENS - EHESS - CNRS), Département d'Etudes Cognitives, Ecole Normale Supérieure, 29, rue d'Ulm, Paris, 75005, France
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