THE COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY OF COMMUNICATION: THE ISSUE OF GRAMMAR AND MEANING

I read Dr. Lockard's very interesting comment on comparative psychology, I and was impressed not only with the scholarship he showed in it, but also by the fact that he feels comparative psychology has poduced mostly what in comparative anatomy and comparative physiology we call analogy, rather than homology. I agree, and have therefore developed an aversion to comparative psychology as it is generally practiced. I am by choice a physiological psychologist, because I believe that only through the study of mechanism can we achieve insight into homology. In the language of genetics, only through an analysis of mechanism can we penetrate through the phenotypical to the genotype. Pure description of animal behavior, though fascinating, is not enough. I used to go out with Danny Lehrman and others to watch birds, and I find watching primates even more interesting. Watching people can of course be the epitome of fascination. But for me these observational techniques have no real chewiness to them, no earthiness. I have to participate, to know about mechanisms, before I can be really satisfied. Most comparative psychologists use Darwinism as an excuse to make their observations a science. To quote Sigmund Freud, 2 this "has .. a dubious appearance of arbitrariness, even though it would be possible, pursuing a Darwinian line of thought to claim that ... [these mechanisms] are indispensible and consequently bound to survive." Now I don't mean by this that genetic population pressure studies or the pursuit of the machinery of evolution is to be regarded as trivial. What I am talking about is the oft-repeated, simple assertion that observations can be explained "by recourse to the principles of random variation and special selection," without spelling out the mechanism by which those principles come to apply to the particular behavior observed. Some have, of course, done the job properly. Danny Lehrman, Thorpe, Hinde, and the whole Cambridge group: these are people who have combined evolutionary principles with the search for mechanisms. So, in the tradition of these pioneers, let me illustrate how I apply the comparative method. I will address myself to the problem of grammar and meaning. I have deliberately chosen this difficult topic; there is no reason why our science should so utterly disregard cognitive processes as it has to date. Konrad Lorenz has said, shOWing great insight, "Life is a knowledge process." In his address of acceptance of the chair at Edinburgh in 1970 and also elsewhere, Vowles ,2 7 suggested that perhaps phylogeny could be characterized by the development of a grammar of behavior. Invertebrates show finite-state Markov-type constructions; vertebrates show phrase-structure hierarchies; and