Vervets nell'Amboseli National Parck living in Kenya are small monkeys with many natural predators (leopard, eagle and python, etc.).. These predators take very different strategy for the assault. In this context, highly selective, it quickly becomes clear one of the essential functions - from a biological point of view-of a language, that of means by which members of a community will keep each other informed about events and objects, inanimate-food - and animated, prey and predators in the environment. Because of their small long-tailed monkeys have little opportunity to respond to these threats, if not escape. However generally not enough to escape, to escape the specific attacks of each of these predators. For each risk have an appropriate strategy of response, but these strategies alone are insufficient, because an animal that did not realize the danger, would not have time to escape. So the answer would be a good strategy can not only be independent but must be social need that even if a person is temporarily absent is any other that I can warn of impending danger. Some functions of language perform precisely these tasks: information about what is happening in the environment - referential function - and push to adopt certain behaviors, conative function. To this end, vervets have a reporting system with three distinct tones each on a specific class of predators, terrestrial, those planes, and snakes. In fact, these three signals are not related to each individual animal: one for Leopard, for example, is also used for the hyena and jackal. This means that these signals have two important characteristics of semiotics: the conventionality and arbitrariness . conventional ' means there is no physical similarity between the sound characteristics of the warning signal and its referent: for example, the signal for the eagle not to imitate. ARBITRARY ', it means that the meaning associated with that signal is the result of a classification: in that sense part of a series of dangerous animals that share-in terms of vervet - the feature to move on the ground legs. This class corresponds to a zoological class - the leopard is a cat, jackal a canidate - but to a functional class. A class that is not constituted in accordance with the objectives dictated directly from the outside, but from the internal needs of the animal that builds .
Bibliography: Cimatti F. (1998) Mind and Language in animals-Carrocci
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