Abstract:

The ability to mark a particular behavior as a communicative act, rather than relying on a small set of phylogenetically-shaped signals, exponentially expands the potential of a communicative system. Essentially any behavior could be made communicative through ostension. When paired with the ability to infer meaning from novel contexts and behaviors, this generates a powerful communicative engine. Human language is arguably built upon just such an ostensive-inferential engine (Sperber & Wilson, 1995; Origgi and Sperber 2000; Scott-Phillips, 2014). The ability to take an action or sound and imbue it with meaning through “performing” it as a signal is undoubtedly an integral part of modern human language. But is it uniquely human?

Recently, Scott-Phillips extended the discussion of the O-I system by systematically contrasting the communication systems of great apes and humans in regards to their properties as codes (Scott-Phillips, 2014, 2015). He argues that ape communication is a “natural code,” relying on associative mechanisms and expanded by metapsychological abilities. Human language is a “conventional code,” built upon metapsychological abilities (the O-I system) and made more powerful by associative mechanisms. This contrast between natural and conventional codes makes important predictions about the communicative behavior of apes and humans, particularly that only humans possess and recognize communicative intentions (an act that provides information that it is communicative – i.e., signaling its own signalhood). This capacity, in turn, lies at the heart of the O-I system. However, the evidence that ape communication is a natural code (and not based on communicative intentions) comes from the published literature on ape communication. This is problematic, because the code model itself has had a dramatic impact on the work that is conducted (and published) in primate communication.

Primate communication studies search for and highlight predictable forms and contingencies that might be interpretable as codes. Ape gestural communication is less predictable and more flexible than the communication systems of many other animals, but while presence of communicative flexibility is used as evidence of intentionality in ape gesture literature (Call & Tomasello, 2007), the ambiguities themselves are often discarded or overlooked. Apes use their gestures flexibly, modifying them in response to their communicative partners: they direct their signals towards others, account for their partner’s gaze, and wait for a response after gesturing, and yet the majority of published papers focus on predictability of signal to response (i.e. searching for codes).

I will review common data analysis procedures in ape gesture research (e.g., Cartmill & Byrne, 2010) and discuss the ways in which they influence the perception that gestures are natural communicative codes. I will present gestures that are typically deemed “unanalyzable.” Many of these are rare or ambiguous gestures that do not show a simple one form to one meaning mapping. These examples have the greatest potential to demonstrate ostensive communication in great apes. The theory that human communication is built on a framework of ostension and inference is compelling, but to determine whether humans are unique in these abilities we must assess the lasting impact of the code model framework on studies of primate communication. Primatologists should tackle this challenge head on. Emerging meta-analytic tools may facilitate this analysis by pooling rare events across studies and detecting complex regularities. These approaches would make significant advances in our understanding of the relationship between primate communication and human language.

References

Call J, Tomasello M (2007) The gestural communication of apes and monkeys. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc, Mahwah.

Cartmill, E., & Byrne, R. (2010). Semantics of primate gestures: intentional meanings of orangutan gestures. Animal cognition, 13(6), 793-804.

Origgi, G., and D. Sperber. (2000). Evolution, communication and the proper function of language. In Evolution and the human mind: language, modu- larity and social cognition. P. Carruthers and A. Chamberlain, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 140–169.

Scott-Phillips, T. (2014). Speaking Our Minds: Why human communication is different, and how language evolved to make it special. Palgrave MacMillan.

Scott-Phillips, T. (2015). Nonhuman primate communication, pragmatics, and the origins of language. Current Anthropology, 56(1), 56-80.

Sperber, D., and D. Wilson. (1995). Relevance: communication and cognition. 2nd edition. Oxford: Blackwell.

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Citation:

Cartmill E. (2016). Lasting Impacts Of The Code Model On Primate Communication Research. In S.G. Roberts, C. Cuskley, L. McCrohon, L. Barceló-Coblijn, O. Fehér & T. Verhoef (eds.) The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference (EVOLANG11). Available online: http://evolang.org/neworleans/papers/170.html