Primate Communication and Human Language

Primate Communication and Human Language PDF Author: Anne Vilain
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027287317
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
After a long period where it has been conceived as iconoclastic and almost forbidden, the question of language origins is now at the centre of a rich debate, confronting acute proposals and original theories. Most importantly, the debate is nourished by a large set of experimental data from disciplines surrounding language. The editors of the present book have gathered researchers from various fields, with the common objective of taking as seriously as possible the search for continuities from non-human primate vocal and gestural communication systems to human speech and language, in a multidisciplinary perspective combining ethology, neuroscience, developmental psychology and linguistics, as well as computer science and robotics. New data and theoretical elaborations on the emergence of referential communication and language are debated here by some of the most creative scientists in the world.

Origins of Human Language

Origins of Human Language PDF Author: Louis-Jean Boë
Publisher: Speech Production and Perception
ISBN: 9783631737262
Category : Animal communication
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book proposes a detailed picture of the continuities and ruptures between communication in primates and language in humans. It explores a diversity of perspectives on the origins of language, including a fine description of vocal communication in animals, mainly in monkeys and apes, but also in birds, the study of vocal tract anatomy and cortical control of the vocal productions in monkeys and apes, the description of combinatory structures and their social and communicative value, and the exploration of the cognitive environment in which language may have emerged from nonhuman primate vocal or gestural communication.

Primate Communication and Human Language

Primate Communication and Human Language PDF Author: Anne Vilain
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027204543
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
After a long period where it has been conceived as iconoclastic and almost forbidden, the question of language origins is now at the centre of a rich debate, confronting acute proposals and original theories. Most importantly, the debate is nourished by a large set of experimental data from disciplines surrounding language. The editors of the present book have gathered researchers from various fields, with the common objective of taking as seriously as possible the search for "continuities" from non-human primate vocal and gestural communication systems to human speech and language, in a multidisciplinary perspective combining ethology, neuroscience, developmental psychology and linguistics, as well as computer science and robotics. New data and theoretical elaborations on the emergence of referential communication and language are debated here by some of the most creative scientists in the world.

Primate Communication

Primate Communication PDF Author: Katja Liebal
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521195047
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
Multimodal approach to primate communication with focus on its cognitive foundations and how this relates to theories of language evolution.

Gestural Communication in Nonhuman and Human Primates

Gestural Communication in Nonhuman and Human Primates PDF Author: Katja Liebal
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027222404
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
The aim of this volume is to bring together the research in gestural communication in both nonhuman and human primates and to explore the potential of a comparative approach and its contribution to the question of an evolutionary scenario in which gestures play a signuificant role.

Why Chimpanzees Can't Learn Language and Only Humans Can

Why Chimpanzees Can't Learn Language and Only Humans Can PDF Author: Herbert S. Terrace
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231550014
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
In the 1970s, the behavioral psychologist Herbert S. Terrace led a remarkable experiment to see if a chimpanzee could be taught to use language. A young ape, named “Nim Chimpsky” in a nod to the linguist whose theories Terrace challenged, was raised by a family in New York and instructed in American Sign Language. Initially, Terrace thought that Nim could create sentences but later discovered that Nim’s teachers inadvertently cued his signing. Terrace concluded that Project Nim failed—not because Nim couldn’t create sentences but because he couldn’t even learn words. Language is a uniquely human quality, and attempting to find it in animals is wishful thinking at best. The failure of Project Nim meant we were no closer to understanding where language comes from. In this book, Terrace revisits Project Nim to offer a novel view of the origins of human language. In contrast to both Noam Chomsky and his critics, Terrace contends that words, as much as grammar, are the cornerstones of language. Retracing human evolution and developmental psychology, he shows that nonverbal interaction is the foundation of infant language acquisition, leading up to a child’s first words. By placing words and conversation before grammar, we can, for the first time, account for the evolutionary basis of language. Terrace argues that this theory explains Nim’s inability to acquire words and, more broadly, the differences between human and animal communication. Why Chimpanzees Can’t Learn Language and Only Humans Can is a masterful statement of the nature of language and what it means to be human.

The Origins of Language

The Origins of Language PDF Author: Barbara J. King
Publisher: School for Advanced Research Press
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Book Description
Is human language unique in the natural world, or does it have meaningful precursors in animal communication? In this book, primatologists and palaeoanthropologists examine the non-human primate data and use their research to present new theories of language origin and evolution.

The Speech of Monkeys

The Speech of Monkeys PDF Author: R. L. Garner
Publisher: DigiCat
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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Book Description
"The Speech of Monkeys" is an aftermath of the experiment conducted by R.L. Garner. The author went to Africa to study and record the voices of gorillas and chimpanzees. The book also mentioned the particular characteristics which mark the sound of monkeys as speech and distinguish them from mere automatic sounds. The author in this book, aims to let the world know with what results from his labours have been rewarded, and with the hope that it may be the means of inducing others to pursue investigations.

Primate Communication Systems and the Emergence of Human Language

Primate Communication Systems and the Emergence of Human Language PDF Author: Laura Jane Beckman Lancaster
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Animal communication
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description


Language in Primates

Language in Primates PDF Author: J. de Luce
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461254965
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
This anthology was originally planned in connection with a symposium "Language in Primates: Implications for Linguistics, Anthropology, Psychology, and Philosophy," at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. Publication of the book would not have been possible without the support given to the Symposium by many individuals and groups. The Editors thank everyone involved for their kind and generous assistance. Specifi cally, we thank the invited speakers at the Symposium, Thomas A. Sebeok, H. Lyn Miles, Roger S. Fouts, and Thomas Simon. The chapters in this book by Miles, Fouts, and Simon are revised versions of their lectures at the Symposium. We thank Edward Simmel for his encouragement, his patience with our efforts, and his help in planning and directing the Symposium. For their financial assistance, we thank the co-sponsors of the Symposium: the Sigma Chi Foundation/William P. Huffman Scholar-in Residence Program at Miami University, as well as the Departments of Classics, Philosophy, Psychology, and Sociology and Anthropology at Miami. We thank Barbara Johnson, Polly J. Harris and Brenda Shaw for their secretarial and editorial help, and Shirley Gallimore for her patience, care, good humor, and hard work in typing the manuscript. Finally, we thank the contributors to this volume.