There are some basic signals which indeed do not serve to regulate social relationships, such as the warning signal(s) for danger. In birds with dialect formation, some signals are genetically inherited, others are learned, and dialects only diverge in the latter part of the vocabulary. Warning signals typically belong to the genetically inherited ones. In general, the impression I have is that as one moves from "lower" to "higher" animals, and particularly to the primates, the number of "social regulating" signals increases markedly against the background of a more or less constant number of few "non-social regulating".

To avoid misunderstandings about what I mean: in "socially regulating" signals I include all those involved in soliciting, mating, imposing, chasing away or challenging rivals, gathering, "togetherness" signals, etc., also signals calling upon another to do something, or announcing what social position one claims for oneself or that one is about to do something, and particularly such which identify either oneself or another as either belonging or not belonging in a certain group of conspecifics.