July 5, 2015
Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer
Dear Reader,
This is my second response to “Sound on the rebound: bringing
form and function back to the forefront in understanding nonhuman primate vocal
signaling” by Owren and Rendall (2001). As we will have an evolutionary, thorough-going, environmental account of how primates communicate, we may
pay attention to why we talk the way we do. We can learn from
studies on primates that as speakers we influence listeners in a
positive way or we dominate them in negative manner.
In other words, we either engage in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) or Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). The former evokes approach behavior in the receiver or listener, such as grooming, but the latter, as the receiver is threatened by the dominant conspecific, elicits avoidance and escape behavior.
Neither SVB nor NVB is what only the speaker or the listener does; it is what they do together. Thus, the dominant speaker, who coerces the subordinate listener, engages in NVB together with this subordinate listener and both engage in NVB. In hierarchical communication among humans dominant as well as subordinate communicators engage in NVB. Although there may be moments of SVB, the hierarchy is maintained by NVB.
In other words, we either engage in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) or Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). The former evokes approach behavior in the receiver or listener, such as grooming, but the latter, as the receiver is threatened by the dominant conspecific, elicits avoidance and escape behavior.
Neither SVB nor NVB is what only the speaker or the listener does; it is what they do together. Thus, the dominant speaker, who coerces the subordinate listener, engages in NVB together with this subordinate listener and both engage in NVB. In hierarchical communication among humans dominant as well as subordinate communicators engage in NVB. Although there may be moments of SVB, the hierarchy is maintained by NVB.
By contrast, in SVB, the non-aversive speaker is no longer dominant,
and, because of that, the subordinate listener is no longer subordinate. Stated
differently, the hierarchy is no longer created and maintained by the way in
which we talk. During SVB the speaker
and the listener transcend biology, which, in spite of the arrival of language, continued to determine that we either dominate each other or are dominated by each other while we talk. SVB and NVB are phylogenetic human behaviors which can be observed in non-human primates.
The paper I currently respond to is titled “Sound on the rebound:
bringing form and function back to the forefront in understanding nonhuman
primate vocal signaling.” The authors are trying to do the same
as what I am trying to do with human vocal signaling: by bringing back the attention
to the sound of our voice while we speak, we are going to find out that form
and function are inseparable. If our
sound is to establish equality, harmony and safety, it must have the properties
that will make this possible.
“Dense forest habitants should generally favor stereotyped calls with simple messages resistant to transmission degradation, while open habitats would promote more complex, graded acoustics and messages taking advantage of additional contextual and visual information available to receivers.”
It is no surprise “the strongest demonstrations have involved predator-specific alarm calls” as “acoustically distinct vocalizations” are apparent in primates and other species. However, when we consider “many sounds associated with activities like group movement, foraging, and social interaction” which “do not have consistent antecedents or outcomes”, it is difficult to infer from such coarse-grained vocalizations as such “results tend to reveal fundamental differences rather than similarities between primate calls and human speech.”
The authors object to the troubling fact that the study of primate vocalizations has become based on concepts “borrowed from linguistics.” I totally agree with their concern and wish to extend their objection even further. Their concern is “that this stance makes normative biological constructs secondary to linguistic ones, particularly when calls are characterized as coded, referential information.” The same mistake is made in human vocalization. We urgently need a natural, biological, behaviorist account of the sounds we make while we speak. Inferred, metaphoric, constructs, such as “coded, referential information”, don’t “readily translate in either mechanism or function, two pillars of evolutionary analysis.” Certain environments, certain people make us sound a certain way.
“Dense forest habitants should generally favor stereotyped calls with simple messages resistant to transmission degradation, while open habitats would promote more complex, graded acoustics and messages taking advantage of additional contextual and visual information available to receivers.”
It is no surprise “the strongest demonstrations have involved predator-specific alarm calls” as “acoustically distinct vocalizations” are apparent in primates and other species. However, when we consider “many sounds associated with activities like group movement, foraging, and social interaction” which “do not have consistent antecedents or outcomes”, it is difficult to infer from such coarse-grained vocalizations as such “results tend to reveal fundamental differences rather than similarities between primate calls and human speech.”
The authors object to the troubling fact that the study of primate vocalizations has become based on concepts “borrowed from linguistics.” I totally agree with their concern and wish to extend their objection even further. Their concern is “that this stance makes normative biological constructs secondary to linguistic ones, particularly when calls are characterized as coded, referential information.” The same mistake is made in human vocalization. We urgently need a natural, biological, behaviorist account of the sounds we make while we speak. Inferred, metaphoric, constructs, such as “coded, referential information”, don’t “readily translate in either mechanism or function, two pillars of evolutionary analysis.” Certain environments, certain people make us sound a certain way.
No comments:
Post a Comment