Indexical and representational properties of human and animal communication

我的研究重点是人类和动物交流的结构和功能特性。我们的目标是确定这两个群体之间的相似性和差异，这将有助于阐明人类语言进化的轨迹，这仍然是当代科学中最困难但最重要的问题之一，因为语言，思想和行为之间存在广泛而复杂的相互联系。这一建议侧重于语言的两个核心特征，即其索引属性，这些属性传达了说话者的许多个人层面（例如，他们的个人身份，性别，年龄和身体大小），这是核心的日常社会使用的语言;和其代表性的属性，即文字传达额外的符号信息，我们周围的世界。动物的声音信号具有类似的索引属性，在某些情况下，也可以像单词一样具有代表性。因此，研究将在人类和动物交流的这些特性中寻找更多潜在的重叠。项目将包括检查语音音高（F0）与人类和狒狒的发声者身份，性别和体型的索引歧视中的共振的优先级，以及人类说话者吸引力，权威，地位和信誉的扩展归因;在人类这种基于语音的索引判断中学习或进化的偏见的作用;以及由声音F0提示的进化上古老的索引维度与灵长类动物中的共鸣以及由当代语言中的单词标记的简单表征对比之间的潜在感知-认知联系。知觉实验也将测试潜在的人类一样的大脑处理的索引和代表性的内容，狒狒的物种特异性发声。最后，对红松鼠和野生火鸡的行为和交流的新的实地研究将扩展比较研究的框架，并提供更广泛的测试，生态，社会性和大脑大小在动物和人类交流中代表复杂性的演变中所起的作用。

My research focuses on structural and functional properties of human and animal communication. The goal is to identify similarities and differences between the two groups that will help to illuminate the trajectory of human language evolution, which remains one of the most difficult but important problems in contemporary science given the extensive and complex interconnections between language, thought, and behaviour. This proposal focuses on two core features of language, namely its indexical properties, which communicate many personal dimensions of speakers (e.g., their individual identity, sex, age, and body size) that are central to the daily social uses of language; and its representational properties, whereby words communicate additional symbolic information about the world around us. Animal vocal signals have similar indexical properties and, in some cases, can also function representationally a bit like words. Research will therefore pursue additional potential overlap in these properties of human and animal communication. Projects will include examining the priority of voice pitch (F0) versus resonances in indexical discriminations of vocalizer identity, sex, and body size in humans and baboons, as well as extended attributions of speaker attractiveness, authority, status and credibility in humans; the role of learned or evolved biases in such voice-based indexical judgements in humans; and the potential perceptual-cognitive links between evolutionarily ancient indexical dimensions cued by voice F0 and resonances in primates and simple representational contrasts marked by words in contemporary languages. Perceptual experiments will also test for potentially human-like lateralized brain processing of the indexical and representational content of species-specific vocalizations in baboons. Finally, new field studies of the behaviour and communication of red squirrels and wild turkeys will extend the framework of comparative research and provide broader tests of the roles that ecology, sociality, and brain size play in the evolution of representational complexity in animal and human communication.