Peter Marler

Abstract

This review of recent work on vocal communication in animals, especially birds

and primates, focuses on three basic questions that are relevant to the relation-

ship among animal signaling, language, and music. One is the meaning of animal

signals, many, probably most, of which are affective and rooted in the emotional

state of the signaler. But careful study has shown that some alarm and food calls

function symbolically. The second question is whether there is anything equiva-

lent to a sentence in naturally occurring animal communication. The answer

appears to be negative. The distinction is between lexical syntax or lexicoding,

which provides criteria for defining a true sentence, and phonological coding or

phonocoding. Phonocoding concerns the ability to create new sound patterns by

recombination simply to generate signal diversity. The potential for lexicoding

arises only when recombined signal elements are endowed with meaning. Lexi-

coding appears to be distinctively human, but phonocoding is widespread in

certain groups, especially songbirds and whales, some of whose vocalizations are

learned. It is less common in nonhuman primates, whose vocalizations are innate.

A comparison between chimpanzees and gibbons, on the one hand, and song-

birds on the other, reveals that birds with learned songs have much larger vocal

repertoires, depending on extensive exploitation of phonocoding in their devel-

opment. In response to the third question, whether animals make music, I suggest

that the ability to engage freely in phonological rearrangement of sound ele-

ments to create new sequences is a necessary precursor not only of language but

also of the ability to create music. Given that animal songs that are learned and

that depend on phonocoding for signal diversity are, like human music, primar-

ily nonsymbolic and affective, their study may be a source of insights into the

animal origins of human music.

When animals communicate, every available sense is likely to be

exploited, but speculations about relationships to language and music

must focus primarily on communication by ear. In contemplating what

we know about auditory communication in animals, we begin with

some serious handicaps. Our understanding of the principles of vocal

communication in animals is still very limited. With human speech and

music, the situation is obviously very different. We are born and bred

as users of both. As a consequence, we have an unsurpassed view

from within, and our insights are authentic to a degree that we can

never attain with communication systems of other species, especially

with research still in its infancy. Our present state of relative ignorance

about animal communication sometimes forces us to simplify and to

focus not on their highest, often idiosyncratic achievements, that are

among the most intriguing, but rather on the fundamental underlying

principles.

In the interests of science, I have adopted this reductionistic spirit, and

pose three basic questions, drawing illustrations from the animals that I

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Origins of Music and Speech: Insights from Animals

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