Meaning

It is well established that infants begin to gradually acquire arbitrary word-meaning associations around 12 months of age. We investigate the route prior to this arbitrariness capacity: before 1 year old, how stable are vocalisations conveying the same meaning? How can we describe infant repertoire of vocalisations, in terms of functional flexibility versus functional fixedness, and how does the expression of meaning develop?

As part of the Animal Meaning Task, we approach these questions with a cross-species perspective:

Non-primate mammals (meerkats), non-human primates (chimpanzees and Sooty Mangabeys) and human infants prior to language will be comparatively studied to understand how meaning is expressed. To disentangle biological pressure from referential learning or inferential reasoning, we investigate to what extent these species can emit the same signal and assign it to different functions, and, conversely, whether one meaning can be conveyed flexibly using different signals.