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Pyow-hack revisited : two analyses of putty-nosed monkey alarm calls

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Zuberbeuhler_2015_Lingua_Pyow_hack_AM.pdf (777.4Kb)
Date
02/2016
Author
Schlenker, Philippe
Chemla, Emmanuel
Arnold, Kate
Zuberbuehler, Klaus
Keywords
Primate linguistics
Primate semantics
Putty-nosed calls
Alarm calls
Compositionality
BF Psychology
3rd-DAS
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Abstract
Male putty-nosed monkeys have two main alarm calls, pyows and hacks. While pyows have a broad distribution suggestive of a general call, hacks are often indicative of eagles. In a series of articles, Arnold and Zuberbühler showed that putty-nosed monkeys sometimes produce distinct pyow-hack sequences made of a small number of pyows followed by a small number of hacks; and that these are predictive of group movement. Arnold and Zuberbühler claimed that pyow-hack sequences are syntactically combinatorial but not semantically compositional because their meaning cannot be derived from the meanings of their component parts. We compare two theories of this phenomenon. One formalizes and modifies the non-compositional theory. The other presents a semantically compositional alternative based on weak meanings for pyow (‘general alarm’) and hack (‘non-ground movement’), combined with pragmatic principles of competition; a crucial one is an ‘Urgency Principle’ whereby calls that provide information about the nature/location of a threat must come before calls that do not. Semantically, pyow-hack sequences are compatible with any kind of situation involving (moving) aerial predators or (arboreal) movement of the monkeys themselves. But in the former case, hacks provide information about the location of a threat, and hence should appear at the beginning of sequences. As a result, pyow-hack sequences can only be used for non-threat-related situations involving movement, hence a possible inference that they involve group movement. Without adjudicating the debate, we argue that a formal analysis can help clarify competing theories and derive new predictions that might decide between them.
Citation
Schlenker , P , Chemla , E , Arnold , K & Zuberbuehler , K 2016 , ' Pyow-hack revisited : two analyses of putty-nosed monkey alarm calls ' , Lingua , vol. 171 , pp. 1-23 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2015.10.002
Publication
Lingua
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2015.10.002
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. This work is made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2015.10.002
Description
Schlenker: The research leading to these results received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007–2013)/ERC Grant Agreement N° 324115-FRONTSEM (PI: Schlenker). Schlenker and Chemla: Research was conducted at Institut d’Etudes Cognitives, Ecole Normale Supérieure – PSL Research University. Institut d’Etudes Cognitives is supported by grants ANR-10-IDEX-0001-02 PSL* and ANR-10-LABX-0087 IEC. Arnold: The research leading to these results received funding from the Leverhulme Trust. Zuberbühler: The research leading to these results received funding from the European Research Council under ERC grant ‘Prilang 283871’ and also from the Swiss National Science Foundation under grant ‘FN 310030_143359/1’.
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/10089

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