To crack the meaning of monkey calls linguists team up with primatologists

Linguists teaming up with primatologists have brought the general methods of contemporary linguistics to bear on monkey morphology (pertaining to the structure of calls), syntax (how the calls are put together into sequences), and semantics (what calls and call sequences mean), building on several earlier studies conducted within primatology.

The research was headed by DR Philip Schlenker a senior researcher at Institut Jean-Nicod within France's National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and a Global Distinguished Professor at New York University, associating with Emmanuel Chemla, a research scientist at France's National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), and Klaus Zuberbühler, a professor at Switzerland's University of Neuchâtel, appears 

Philippe Schlenker, says “We can now study the form and meaning of monkey calls using methods from theoretical titi monkeys’ linguistics. Using this approach, we can compare one monkey species to another and see, for instance, that some of their calls have been preserved over three million years."

Details appear in the latest issues of journals Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, Lingua and Theoretical Linguistics.