Voici les éléments 1 - 3 sur 3
  • Publication
    Métadonnées seulement
    Female bonds and kinship in forest guenons
    (2015-4-1)
    Candiotti, Agnes
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    Coye, Camille
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    Ouattara, Karim
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    Petit, Eric
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    Vallet, D
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  • Publication
    Métadonnées seulement
    Suffixation influences receivers' behaviour in non-human primates
    (2015)
    Coye, Camille
    ;
    Ouattara, Karim
    ;
    ;
    Lemasson, Alban
    Compared to humans, non-human primates have very little control over their vocal production. Nonetheless, some primates produce various call combinations, which may partially offset their lack of acoustic flexibility. A relevant example is male Campbell's monkeys (Cercopithecus campbelli), which give one call type ('Krak') to leopards, while the suffixed version of the same call stem ('Krak-oo') is given to unspecific danger. To test whether recipients attend to this suffixation pattern, we carried out a playback experiment inwhichwe broadcast naturally and artificially modified suffixed and unsuffixed 'Krak' calls of male Campbell's monkeys to 42 wild groups of Diana monkeys (Cercopithecus diana diana). The two species form mixed-species groups and respond to each other's vocalizations. We analysed the vocal response of male and female Diana monkeys and overall found significantly stronger vocal responses to unsuffixed (leopard) than suffixed (unspecific danger) calls. Although the acoustic structure of the 'Krak' stem of the calls has some additional effects, subject responses were mainly determined by the presence or the absence of the suffix. This study indicates that suffixation is an evolved function in primate communication in contexts where adaptive responses are particularly important.
  • Publication
    Métadonnées seulement
    Monkey semantics: two 'dialects' of Campbell's monkey alarm calls
    (2014)
    Schlenker, Philippe
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    Chemla, Emmanuel
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    Arnold, Kate
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    Lemasson, Alban
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    Ouattara, Karim
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    Keenan, Sumir
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    Ryder, Robin
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    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.