The Meaning of Primate Signals

Language is just one particularly highly developed form of primate communication.

Rom Harré (Edited by), Vernon Reynolds (Edited by)

9780521087735, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 11 December 2008

272 pages
21.3 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.4 kg

Language is just one particularly highly developed form of primate communication. Recent years have seen increased attention to other forms: studies of animals in the wild, efforts to teach sign language to apes. This volume reflects perspectives from a variety of disciplines on the nature and function of primate signalling systems. Monkeys and apes, like people, live in a world in which they are constantly receiving and transmitting information. How can we interpret the ways in which they process it without imposing our own language-based categorizations? The problem is partly scientific, partly conceptual: that is, partly concerned with what language is. The authors' findings and insights will be of interest to a broad group of primatologists, linguists, psychologists, anthropologists and philosophers.

Part I. The Setting of the Problem: 1 Devious intentions of monkeys and apes? Duane Quiatt
2. What the vocalizations of monkeys mean to humans and what they mean to monkeys themselves Robert M. Seyfarth
3. Category formation in vervet monkeys Dorothy L. Cheney
Part II. Theoretical Preliminaries: 4. The strange creature Justin Leiber
5. Vocabularies and theories Rom Harre
6. Ethology and language Edwin Ardener
7. Must monkeys mean? Roy Harris
8. The inevitability and utility of anthopomorphism in description of primate behaviour Pamela J. Asquith
Part III. Steps towards a solution: 9. 'Language' in apes H. S. Terrace
10. Social changes in a group of rhesus monkeys Vernon Reynolds
11. Categorization of social signals as derived from quantitative analyses of communication processes M. Maurus and D. Ploog
12. Experience tells Eric Jones and Michael Chance.

Subject Areas: Social, group or collective psychology [JMH]