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。我们的目标是找出这两个群体之间的异同，这将有助于阐明人类语言进化的轨迹。鉴于语言、思想和行为之间广泛而复杂的相互联系，这仍然是当代科学中最困难但最重要的问题之一。这一建议侧重于语言的两个核心特征，即它的索引属性，它传达了说话者的许多个人维度（例如，他们的个人身份、性别、年龄和体型），这些都是语言日常社会使用的核心；以及它的表征性，通过这种表征性，单词可以传达关于我们周围世界的额外符号信息。动物的声音信号具有类似的索引特性，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的潜在重叠。项目将包括在人类和狒狒的发声者身份、性别和体型的指数区分中，检查音高（F0）与共振的优先级，以及人类说话者吸引力、权威、地位和可信度的扩展归因；习得或进化的偏见在人类基于语音的索引判断中的作用；以及由灵长类动物的声音F0和共振引起的进化上古老的索引维度与现代语言中以单词为标志的简单表征对比之间的潜在感知-认知联系。知觉实验还将测试狒狒对特定物种发声的索引和表征内容的潜在类似人类的侧化大脑处理。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，并为生态学、社会性和大脑大小在动物和人类交流的表征复杂性进化中所起的作用提供更广泛的测试。

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.