Maria Ujhelyi

Abstract

The social organization of primate species is a key factor in the evolution of vocal

communication, and this is relevant to the emergence of music and language. The

most elementary languagelike characteristics, both in structure and function,

arise in the context of vocal territorial marking, which among present-day species

has attained its most sophisticated form in the solo and duet singing of the lesser

apes (gibbons). The social organization of the great apes, especially that of

common chimpanzees and bonobos, makes it possible to preserve and maintain

these characteristics while adding new, essential functions, namely, an increase

in voluntary control and social transmission. However, specializations present

in these species, which differ from those of humans ancestors, are obstacles to

further elaboration of these capacities. Either typical speech sounds and true

grammar, or the application of representational meaning to external objects, is

as yet missing at this stage. This primatological perspective provides a heuristic

framework for the reconstruction of a social setting in which these limitations

would not have been operative and, consequently, might have permitted lan-

guage to emerge as a qualitative novelty.

In this chapter I suggest that issues pertaining to the origins of music

and of language are related by more than superficial parallelism. Since

human language differs qualitatively from animal communication

systems, any attempt to reconstruct its origin within the framework of

biology must come to grips with the problem of qualitative change.

Qualitative change, the emergence of new qualities, implies system-level

organizational change. For the evolution of communication, the most

important system level is sociality: evolution of the social system.^1 Since

the social system, the network of social behaviors and interactions,

supplies the framework and field for possible communicative interac-

tions, evolutionary change there may result in drastic and discontinuous

transitions at the level of communication and vocal signals. Thus, the

connection between sociality and mental capacities, including com-

municative ones, becomes a central issue for understanding the primate

order (Ujhelyi 1979). As early as the 1970s primatologists suggested

that social contexts pose stronger challenges for primate intelligence

than manual tasks (Humphrey 1976). Since then a number of field

studies and laboratory investigations showed that monkeys and apes

have more sophisticated problem-solving skills in dealing with social

relations than in object manipulation (see Cheney and Seyfarth

1990). Sociality as a principal selection factor in the evolution of

primate intelligence is thus gaining wider acceptance (Whiten and Byrne

1988).

Since communication itself (including language) is an aspect of social

interactions, it may not be independent of social organization, and its

8

Social Organization as a Factor in the Origins of Language

and Music