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Competition and Cooperation in Language Evolution: A Comparison Between Communication of Apes and Humans

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Conflict and Multimodal Communication

Part of the book series: Computational Social Sciences ((CSS))

Abstract

This paper analyzes the topic of conflict in reference to the evolution of language. Specifically, it examines two key elements involved in conflicting interactions, competition and cooperation, and shows how they are involved in the evolution of linguistic skills. According to a model of language origins recently proposed by Michael Tomasello, competition and cooperation are crucial to explain the transition from ape communication to human language. The idea is that ape communication is mainly individualistic because of the competitive nature of nonhuman primates; on the contrary, human language has an intrinsically cooperative nature and this makes human communication qualitatively different from animal communication. The aim of this paper is to call such a model into question by pointing to an “altruism of knowledge” in apes by discussing some recent experimental data on chimpanzee vocal communication.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This idea recalls Paul Grice’s principle of cooperation (Grice 1975), which has been a theoretical milestone elaborated in linguistic pragmatics (e.g., Sperber and Wilson 1986). The principle of cooperation can be formulated in the following way: make your conversational contribution what is required at the stage at which it occurs by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged. On this point, see also Castelfranchi and Poggi (1998) in which Grice’s cooperation principle is conceived as an instantiation, in language, of Trivers’ reciprocal altruism: namely, they posit the existence of an altruism of knowledge. Incidentally, the importance of beliefs for human agents, as their primary route to planning, decision, and action, accounts for why deception is viewed as an aggressive act, a violation of the fundamental principle of altruism of knowledge, and of the natural right of humans to come to know beliefs relevant for their goals.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Communication and Visual Arts, Roma Tre University, Via Ostiense 234/236, 00146, Rome, Italy

    Ines Adornetti

  2. Department of Human Sciences, University of L’Aquila, Viale Nizza 14, 67100, L’Aquila, Italy

    Ines Adornetti

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  1. Ines Adornetti
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Correspondence to Ines Adornetti .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Uninettuno University, Roma, Italy

    Francesca D'Errico

  2. Università Roma Tre, Roma, Italy

    Isabella Poggi

  3. Department of Computing Science, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom

    Alessandro Vinciarelli

  4. Department of Education Sciences, Università di Macerata, Roma, Italy

    Laura Vincze

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Adornetti, I. (2015). Competition and Cooperation in Language Evolution: A Comparison Between Communication of Apes and Humans. In: D'Errico, F., Poggi, I., Vinciarelli, A., Vincze, L. (eds) Conflict and Multimodal Communication. Computational Social Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14081-0_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14081-0_5

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