Great ape gestures: intentional communication with a rich set of innate signals
Great ape gestures: intentional communication with a rich set of innate signals
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DOI：
10.1007/s10071-017-1096-4
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发表时间：
2017-07-01
期刊：
影响因子：
2.7
通讯作者：
Tanner, J.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Byrne, R. W.;Cartmill, E.;Tanner, J.
类人猿故意地、自愿地做出手势，以影响特定的目标受众，在选择使用哪种手势时，它们会考虑目标受众的注意力方向。这些事实使猿手势的研究与理解人类语言的进化前体直接相关;在这里，我们从这个角度对猿手势进行了评估，重点关注“圣安德鲁斯小组”研究人员的工作。猿的手势的含义相对较少且简单。与人类的语言一样，猿的手势通常有几个不同的含义，这些含义可以通过行为上下文有效地消除歧义。与大多数其他动物的信号相比，类人猿的手势系统很庞大。由于这一点，以及它们实现的预期含义相对较少，猿的手势是多余的，含义有广泛的重叠。绝大多数的手势是天生的，在这个意义上，物种的生物遗传包括发展每一种手势形式并将其用于特定目的的潜力。此外，许多手势的系统发育起源相对古老，因为手势在类人猿家族的不同属之间广泛共享。获得一个成年人的剧目是一个过程，首先探索许多手势的先天物种潜力，然后逐渐限制到一个最终的（活跃的）剧目，这是小得多。尚未发现句法结构的证据。
Great apes give gestures deliberately and voluntarily, in order to influence particular target audiences, whose direction of attention they take into account when choosing which type of gesture to use. These facts make the study of ape gesture directly relevant to understanding the evolutionary precursors of human language; here we present an assessment of ape gesture from that perspective, focusing on the work of the "St Andrews Group" of researchers. Intended meanings of ape gestures are relatively few and simple. As with human words, ape gestures often have several distinct meanings, which are effectively disambiguated by behavioural context. Compared to the signalling of most other animals, great ape gestural repertoires are large. Because of this, and the relatively small number of intended meanings they achieve, ape gestures are redundant, with extensive overlaps in meaning. The great majority of gestures are innate, in the sense that the species' biological inheritance includes the potential to develop each gestural form and use it for a specific range of purposes. Moreover, the phylogenetic origin of many gestures is relatively old, since gestures are extensively shared between different genera in the great ape family. Acquisition of an adult repertoire is a process of first exploring the innate species potential for many gestures and then gradual restriction to a final (active) repertoire that is much smaller. No evidence of syntactic structure has yet been detected.