Might be of interest.
For YETI
Debabrata Phukon
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Brinky Desai <brinky.d@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, Nov 26, 2020, 11:36 PM
Subject: Talk: Chimpanzee Vocal communication and the search for language
origin
To: <meet.yeti@xxxxxxxxx>
Dear Sir/ Ma'am
Could you please forward the details of the talk below and the
attachment to the YETI mailing list
The talk is organized by the School of Arts and Sciences, Ahmedabad
University and it is open to all.
Title: Chimpanzee vocal communication and the search for language origins
Abstract:
The capacity for symbolic language makes humans distinct from other
animals. As one of the two living species most closely related to humans,
chimpanzees provide important comparative data for understanding language
origins. Here I report on recent field studies of chimpanzee vocal
communication. Efforts to find language parallels in chimpanzee
communication have focused on two main topics: vocal learning, and
referential communication. Previous studies have reported that chimpanzees
exhibit vocal dialects in their ‘pant-hoot’ calls, suggesting they have
some capacity for vocal learning. Our work, however, finds no evidence for
vocal dialects between the two neighboring communities at Gombe. Some
captive studies have reported evidence for referential signaling in the
food-associated calls of chimpanzees, in which acoustic structure varies
with features of food, such as abundance, divisibility, and preference
level. Contrary to these captive studies, we have found no evidence for
such referential signaling. These findings support the view that the key
steps in language evolution occurred after the divergence of the lineages
that led to humans and chimpanzees. The specific factors promoting language
evolution in humans remain unknown, but considerations of the dance
‘language’ of honeybees suggests collective foraging played a major role.
Chimpanzees, like other primates, forage independently, and share only a
small proportion of the foods they obtain. In contrast, humans, like
honeybees, are collective foragers, whose reproductive success depends on
the foraging success of other group members. Collective foraging therefore
may have promoted the evolution of honest signaling in the hominin lineage.
Bio:
Michael L. Wilson is an Associate Professor in the Department of
Anthropology and the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior at the
University of Minnesota, and a Fellow of the Institute on the Environment.
He studies nonhuman primates to provide comparative data for testing
hypotheses about the evolution of distinctively human traits. He focuses on
the behavior and ecology of chimpanzees at Gombe National Park, Tanzania.
Other work in his lab includes field studies of baboons, geladas, and
bonobos, and agent-based computer models of virtual primates.
Regards,
Brinky Desai
Ph.D. student
Biological and Life-Sciences
School of Arts and Sciences
Ahmedabad University,
Navrangpura, Ahmedabad 380009
Gujarat, India
Attachment:
SASLectureSeries9-1.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document