Dictionary of Human Evolution and Biology

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Vocalization

1. act of making sound by pushing air past the vocal apparatus in the throat.

2. sound evoked by a primate, which emanates not from the neocortex (that is, from Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area), but from the lower forebrain, whose centers are part of the limbic system. Nonhuman primate vocalizations are said to be emotional rather than referential (i.e. they are nonsymbolic). Primates such as vervets, however, do have discrete warning calls for various predators, which may be neocortical in origin.

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