Helen Williams/Photo Researchers Inc.
Cries of the Cercopithecus nictitans may provide a link in the evolution of human languages.
Language evolution: Semantic combinations in primate calls
Posted on 05/23/2006 4:32:06 PM PDT by neverdem
Researchers taping calls of the putty-nosed monkey in the forests of Nigeria may have come a small step closer to understanding the origins of human language.
The researchers have heard the monkeys string two alarm calls into a combined sound with a different meaning, as if forming a word, Kate Arnold and Klaus Zuberbühler report in the current issue of Nature.
Monkeys are known to have specific alarm calls for different predators. Vervet monkeys have one call for eagles, another for snakes and a third for leopards. But this seems a far cry from language because the vervets do not combine the calls into anything resembling words or sentences.
The putty-nosed monkeys have a "pyow" call meaning there are leopards about and a hacklike sound to warn of the crowned eagle. The "pyow" calls attention to a leopard on the ground.
When hearing the "hack" sound, a monkey tends to freeze because movement would betray its position to an eagle.
Dr. Arnold and Dr. Zuberbühler, zoologists at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, noticed that adult male monkeys in each troupe were combining the "pyow" and "hack" calls.
Playing back a "pyow-hack" call to see how the monkeys interpreted it, the zoologists found it made the troop leave the area.
Language is a surprising faculty because it seems to pop up almost out of nowhere in the human lineage, instead of evolving in steady stages.
Researchers studying monkeys and apes have learned that they possess all the basic apparatus needed to make and analyze sounds. But the nonhuman primates did not seem to possess either of the two combinatorial features of language, those of combining discrete sounds into compound words, and of stringing words together under rules of syntax.
Dr. Zuberbühler said that he and Dr. Arnold had not...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I wish they would quit dropping hints and just come out with it!
"Playing back a "pyow-hack" call to see how the monkeys interpreted it, the zoologists found it made the troop leave the area. "
Are the researchers sure that the monkeys weren't just reacting to one of the two sounds?
Forgive me for making an introduction in such a manner. I am Cheetah, son of Sinbad, the former Finance Minister of Nigerian monkeys.
I am looking for help in depositing $10,000,000 worth of bananas in a cold storage facility in the United States and your name was suggested as an individual of good character.
Does a black slab mean anything to you? Know anything about 'space odysseys'?
Paging Ernie Kovacs.........
How the h--- would they know?
Spamming monkeys- there's nothing worse!
They usually drop something else.
"Spamming monkeys- there's nothing worse!"
Indeed.
It must be in the fossil record somewhere (/sarcasm)...
Dear Mr. XYZ,
I am Macaq, attorney to Prince Lemur of the nigerian monkeys. as yoou know my distinguished client passed away some years ago. He left behind 300,000,000 dollars US. I am represnting his wife woh would like to remove th money to a safe country. You have been reccommended as a trustworthy person.....
Yep. Because languages just "pop up" fully formed and intact with no leanings on other languages. They have no borrowed terms or grammar, and completely original.
Languages and their use involves quite a bit of evolution. Look at what some consider the "dumbing down" of English into 133+5p34k and tell me how long it's taken over the course of human lineage to work that out?
And as a side note, my dog has a bark reserved especially for squirrels that he trees. Does that mean humans may have learned to speak from domesticated dogs? ;)
Pyow-hack refers to a leopard in the air?
Hack-pyow would refer to a really nasty gob of spit.
Mrs VS
How the h--- would they know?
I believe what they mean is that unlike most human physical features, biochemistry, behaviors, etc., human-like speech doesn't seem to be present, even in a less developed form, in the other primates. Unlike, say, opposable thumbs, which became more refined over a long period of time in the primate lineage, grammar-based language seems to have popped up in the human lineage without a long "pedigree" stretching back to the earliest primates, or even some of our closer biological cousins.
Howard Dean will want to sign them up as voters, after all they are "human". By doing this the DNC hopes to raise the IQ of its voter base by at lest 10%.
Time machine....
susie
I was going to ask what the monkey warning call is when they see a RINO approaching - might be useful.
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