TY - JOUR
T1 - Animal Communication in Linguistic and Cognitive Perspective
AU - Scott-Phillips, Thom
AU - Heintz, Christophe
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 by the author(s).
PY - 2023/1/17
Y1 - 2023/1/17
N2 - Detailed comparative studies have revealed many surface similarities between linguistic communication and the communication of nonhumans. How should we interpret these discoveries in linguistic and cognitive perspective? We review the literature with a specific focus on analogy (similar features and function but not shared ancestry) and homology (shared ancestry). We conclude that combinatorial features of animal communication are analogous but not homologous to natural language. Homologies are found instead in cognitive capacities of attention manipulation, which are enriched in humans, making possible many distinctive forms of communication, including language use. We therefore present a new, graded taxonomy of means of attention manipulation, including a new class we call Ladyginian, which is related to but slightly broader than the more familiar class of Gricean interaction. Only in the latter do actors have the goal of revealing specifically informative intentions. Great ape interaction may be best characterized as Ladyginian but not Gricean.
AB - Detailed comparative studies have revealed many surface similarities between linguistic communication and the communication of nonhumans. How should we interpret these discoveries in linguistic and cognitive perspective? We review the literature with a specific focus on analogy (similar features and function but not shared ancestry) and homology (shared ancestry). We conclude that combinatorial features of animal communication are analogous but not homologous to natural language. Homologies are found instead in cognitive capacities of attention manipulation, which are enriched in humans, making possible many distinctive forms of communication, including language use. We therefore present a new, graded taxonomy of means of attention manipulation, including a new class we call Ladyginian, which is related to but slightly broader than the more familiar class of Gricean interaction. Only in the latter do actors have the goal of revealing specifically informative intentions. Great ape interaction may be best characterized as Ladyginian but not Gricean.
KW - Animal communication
KW - Grice
KW - Ladygina-Kohts
KW - Washburn
KW - comparative cognition
KW - duality of patterning
KW - generativity
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85147887202&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1146/annurev-linguistics-030421-061233
DO - 10.1146/annurev-linguistics-030421-061233
M3 - Review Article
AN - SCOPUS:85147887202
SN - 2333-9683
VL - 9
SP - 93
EP - 111
JO - Annual Review of Linguistics
JF - Annual Review of Linguistics
ER -