{"id":5251,"date":"2015-11-27T16:00:12","date_gmt":"2015-11-27T16:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/?p=5251"},"modified":"2015-11-27T16:00:12","modified_gmt":"2015-11-27T16:00:12","slug":"exploring-language-origins-in-primate-communication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/2015\/11\/27\/exploring-language-origins-in-primate-communication\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploring language origins in primate communication"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Centre for Language and Linguistics<\/a> is to host two events next week on primate communication. The first event is a film screening of Project Nim<\/a> <\/em>on Tuesday 1 December at 4pm in the Lupino Cinema, with a\u00a0guest lecture entitled ‘Functionally Referential Communication in Non-Human Primates: An Evolutionary Stepping-Stone to Language?’ by Dr Brandon Wheeler<\/a> (School of Anthropology and Conservation<\/a>, University of Kent), on Wednesday 2 December at 5pm in Darwin Lecture Theatre 2.<\/p>\n

Project Nim\u00a0<\/em>is a documentary which tells the story of a chimpanzee taken from its mother at birth and raised like a human child by an American family in the 1970s. Highly intelligent, Nim Chimpsky was chosen to be the subject of a language experiment at Columbia University that aimed to discover whether or not chimpanzees could use grammar to create sentences if they were taught sign language and nurtured in a similar environment to human children. His name is a pun on Noam Chomsky, the linguist who theorised that language is unique to humans, which the experiment hoped to disprove.<\/p>\n

The screening is free to attend but you need to register via EventBrit here<\/a>,\u00a0as places are limited.<\/p>\n

In his subsequent lecture, Dr Brandon Wheeler will explore the evolutionary origins of human language in the communication systems of our closest living relatives, primates. A turning point in the study of primate communication was the\u00a0discovery of the alarm call system of vervet monkeys: different predators (eagles, leopards and snakes) elicit different call types, and listeners respond to each call type with predator-specific responses. As\u00a0these context-specific calls seemed to function much like words denoting each predator type, they were deemed ‘functionally referential’ and widely believed to provide the strongest link between primate communication and human language.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0lecture \u00a0will\u00a0review the concept of functional reference, \u00a0and conclude that such context-specific calls do not fundamentally differ from less specific primate vocalisations, with all such calls being comparable not to linguistic utterances, but to emotional\u00a0human vocalisations such as\u00a0laughter and cries. \u00a0Dr Wheeler will argue the continued focus on functionally referent communication\u00a0has become a red herring in the pursuit of the links between primate communication and human language.<\/p>\n

For full details of the lecture are available here:\u00a0www.kent.ac.uk\/secl\/researchcentres\/cll\/events<\/a><\/p>\n

These events are open to all but are of particular interest to\u00a0students of the Department of English Language &\u00a0Linguistics<\/a>.<\/p>\n