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Monkey semantics: two ‘dialects’ of Campbell’s monkey alarm calls

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Abstract

We develop a formal semantic analysis of the alarm calls used by Campbell’s monkeys in the Tai forest (Ivory Coast) and on Tiwai island (Sierra Leone)—two sites that differ in the main predators that the monkeys are exposed to (eagles on Tiwai vs. eagles and leopards in Tai). Building on data discussed in Ouattara et al. (PLoS ONE 4(11):e7808, 2009a; PNAS 106(51): 22026–22031, 2009b and Arnold et al. (Population differences in wild Campbell’s monkeys alarm call use, 2013), we argue that on both sites alarm calls include the roots krak and hok, which can optionally be affixed with -oo, a kind of attenuating suffix; in addition, sentences can start with boom boom, which indicates that the context is not one of predation. In line with Arnold et al., we show that the meaning of the roots is not quite the same in Tai and on Tiwai: krak often functions as a leopard alarm call in Tai, but as a general alarm call on Tiwai. We develop models based on a compositional semantics in which concatenation is interpreted as conjunction, roots have lexical meanings, -oo is an attenuating suffix, and an all-purpose alarm parameter is raised with each individual call. The first model accounts for the difference between Tai and Tiwai by way of different lexical entries for krak. The second model gives the same underspecified entry to krak in both locations (= general alarm call), but it makes use of a competition mechanism akin to scalar implicatures. In Tai, strengthening yields a meaning equivalent to non-aerial dangerous predator and turns out to single out leopards. On Tiwai, strengthening yields a nearly contradictory meaning due to the absence of ground predators, and only the unstrengthened meaning is used.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut Jean-Nicod, CNRS, Paris, France

    Philippe Schlenker

  2. LSCP, CNRS, Paris, France

    Emmanuel Chemla

  3. School of Psychology & Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Mary’s Quad, St Andrews, Fife, Scotland, UK

    Kate Arnold, Sumir Keenan & Klaus Zuberbühler

  4. Université de Rennes 1, Laboratoire d’éthologie animale et humaine, UMR 6552 – C.N.R.S., Campus de Beaulieu, Bâtiment 25, Avenue du Général Leclerc, 35042, Rennes Cedex, France

    Alban Lemasson

  5. Institut Universitaire de France, Maison des universités, 103 boulevard Saint-Michel, 75005, Paris, France

    Alban Lemasson

  6. Laboratory of Zoology and Animal Biology, University Félix Houphouet Boigny Côte d’Ivoire, Abidjan, Ivory Coast

    Karim Ouattara

  7. Institute of Biology, Department of Comparative Cognition, University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland

    Claudia Stephan

  8. School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Scotland, UK

    Claudia Stephan

  9. Centre de Recherche en Mathématiques de la Décision, Université Paris-Dauphine, Paris, France

    Robin Ryder

  10. Cognitive Science Centre, University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland

    Klaus Zuberbühler

Authors
  1. Philippe Schlenker
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  2. Emmanuel Chemla
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  3. Kate Arnold
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  4. Alban Lemasson
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  5. Karim Ouattara
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  6. Sumir Keenan
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  7. Claudia Stephan
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  8. Robin Ryder
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  9. Klaus Zuberbühler
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Philippe Schlenker.

Additional information

For helpful comments, we wish to thank David Adger, Jean-Baptiste André, Ariel Cohen, Ashwini Deo, James Fuller, Jean-Pierre Gautier, Daniel Harbour, Stephanie Harves, Jeremy Kuhn, Ad Neeleman, Franck Ramus, Dunja Veselinovic, Ede Zimmermann, as well as audiences at the following institutions: Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT 23) at UC Santa Cruz (2013); annual meeting of the Linguistic Association of Great Britain 2013 (Workshop on ‘Primate Grammar (and Beyond)’); University of Amsterdam; Département d’Etudes Cognitives, ENS, Paris; NYU Abu Dhabi. Some figures and the bibliography were prepared with Lucie Ravaux’s help.

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Schlenker, P., Chemla, E., Arnold, K. et al. Monkey semantics: two ‘dialects’ of Campbell’s monkey alarm calls. Linguist and Philos 37, 439–501 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-014-9155-7

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