Indexical and representational properties of human and animal communication

我的研究重点是人与动物交流的结构和功能特性。目标是确定这两个群体之间的相似和不同之处，这将有助于阐明人类语言进化的轨迹，鉴于语言、思维和行为之间广泛而复杂的相互联系，语言进化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，即它的指引性，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、年龄和身体大小)，这些是语言日常社会使用的核心；以及它的代表性属性，即单词传达关于我们周围世界的额外象征性信息。动物发声信号具有相似的索引属性，在某些情况下，也可以具有类似于单词的代表性功能。因此，研究将在人类和动物交流的这些特性上追求更多的潜在重叠。项目将包括检查人类和狒狒发音者身份、性别和身体大小的索引区分中发音音调(F0)与共鸣的优先级，以及人类说话者吸引力、权威、地位和可信度的扩展归因；学习或进化的偏见在人类这种基于声音的索引判断中的作用；以及由语音F0提示的进化古老的索引维度与灵长类动物的共鸣和现代语言中以单词标记的简单表征对比之间潜在的知觉-认知联系。知觉实验还将测试可能类似于人类的大脑对特定物种发声的指标性和代表性内容的大脑处理。最后，对红松鼠和野生火鸡的行为和交流进行的新的实地研究将扩展比较研究的框架，并对生态、社会性和大脑大小在动物和人类交流中表征复杂性的演变中所起的作用进行更广泛的测试。

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.