The Origins of Music: Preface - Preface

innate underpinnings to this behavior.The monkeys behave as though

they are innately able to divide up the world of predators into several

broad,ill-defined classes when they first encounter them,leaving it to

individual experience and social example to bring each general referent

class of aerial predators,ground predators,and snakes into sharper focus.

Note that actual call structure is only minimally dependent on experi-

ence,a point that will be returned to.

We also have to equivocate on another aspect of call meaning,because

we cannot distinguish between the alternatives of a label or a pre-

scription (the labeling of an object),whether a predator or food,on the

one hand,and a prescription for the actions relating to that object,on

the other (Marler 1961;Hauser 1996).But despite these gaps in our

understanding,it is nevertheless clear that the linkages between call

and referent are more specific than we usually associate with emotional

35 Origins of Music and Speech

Figure 3.1

A diagrammatic representation of field observations from Africa of stimuli that elicit pro-

duction of the eagle alarm call by adult,juvenile,and infant vervet monkeys.The width of

the bars represents the number of observations.The martial eagle,which preys on infant

vervets,is the major stimulus in adults,but in infants is only one of many.(Data from

Seyfarth,Cheney,and Marler 1980.)

Fig.3.1

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