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The function and mechanism of vocal accommodation in humans and other primates

Ruch, Hanna; Zürcher, Yvonne; Burkart, Judith M (2018). The function and mechanism of vocal accommodation in humans and other primates. Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 93(2):996-1013.

Abstract

The study of non-human animals, in particular primates, can provide essential insights into language evolution. A critical element of language is vocal production learning, i.e. learning how to produce calls. In contrast to other lineages such as songbirds, vocal production learning of completely new signals is strikingly rare in non-human primates. An increasing body of research, however, suggests that various species of non-human primates engage in vocal accommodation and adjust the structure of their calls in response to environmental noise or conspecific vocalizations. To date it is unclear what role vocal accommodation may have played in language evolution, in particular because it summarizes a variety of heterogeneous phenomena which are potentially achieved by different mechanisms. In contrast to non-human primates, accommodation research in humans has a long tradition in psychology and linguistics. Based on theoretical models from these research traditions, we provide a new framework which allows comparing instances of accommodation across species, and studying them according to their underlying mechanism and ultimate biological function. We found that at the mechanistic level, many cases of accommodation can be explained with an automatic perception-production link, but some instances arguably require higher levels of vocal control. Functionally, both human and non-human primates use social accommodation to signal social closeness or social distance to a partner or social group. Together, this indicates that not only some vocal control, but also the communicative function of vocal accommodation to signal social closeness and distance must have evolved prior to the emergence of language, rather than being the result of it. Vocal accommodation as found in other primates has thus endowed our ancestors with pre-adaptations that may have paved the way for language evolution.

Additional indexing

Item Type:Journal Article, refereed, original work
Communities & Collections:07 Faculty of Science > Department of Evolutionary Anthropology
Special Collections > NCCR Evolving Language
08 Research Priority Programs > Language and Space
Dewey Decimal Classification:300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology
Scopus Subject Areas:Life Sciences > General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
Life Sciences > General Agricultural and Biological Sciences
Uncontrolled Keywords:Lombard effect, humans, language evolution, linguistic alignment, non-human primates, phonetic accommodation, vocal accommodation, vocal control, vocal learning, vocal plasticity
Language:English
Date:2018
Deposited On:20 Nov 2017 16:04
Last Modified:17 Oct 2024 01:40
Publisher:Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, Inc.
ISSN:0006-3231
OA Status:Closed
Publisher DOI:https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12382

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