Read the Beforeitsnews.com story here. Advertise at Before It's News here.
Profile image
By Alton Parrish (Reporter)
Contributor profile | More stories
Story Views
Now:
Last hour:
Last 24 hours:
Total:

The Building Blocks of Bird Babble Resemble Human Languages

% of readers think this story is Fact. Add your two cents.


New study sheds light on whether animal vocalizations, like human words, are constructed from smaller building-blocks.

Findings raise the exciting possibility that the capacity to generate meaning from meaningless building blocks is widespread in animals.
“To our knowledge, this is the first time that the meaning-generating building blocks of a non-human communication system have been experimentally identified”, says Prof Simon Townsend of the University of Warwick and Zurich

The ‘building blocks’ of bird calls resemble those of human languages, new research from has found.

Chestnut-crowned babbler. 
Credit:  Niall Stopford
Through analysis of the calls of the chestnut-crowned babbler – a highly social bird from the Australian Outback, the researchers claim to have gained new insight into the evolution of human language.

Human languages are comprised of meaningful words, which themselves are built from different combinations of meaningless sounds. This new research into bird calls, or vocalizations, uncovered that they can, like human languages, also be decomposed into perceptibly distinct meaningless sounds, or ‘building blocks’.

Previous research demonstrated that chestnut-crowned babbler calls seemed to be composed of two different sounds “A” and “B” in different arrangements when performing specific behaviors.

When flying, the birds produced a flight call “AB”, but when feeding chicks in the nest they emitted “BAB” provisioning calls. In the current study, the authors used playback experiments, previously used to test speech-sound discrimination in human infants, to probe the perception of the sound elements in babblers.

Co-author Prof Simon Townsend of the University of Warwick and University of Zurich said:

“To our knowledge, this is the first time that the meaning-generating building blocks of a non-human communication system have been experimentally identified”.

He concluded: “Although the building blocks in the babbler system may be of a very simple kind, it might still help us understand how combinatoriality initially evolved in humans”.

Commenting on the research, lead author Dr Sabrina Engesser of the University of Zurich said:

“Through systematic comparisons we tested which of the elements babblers perceived as equivalent or different sounds. In doing so, we were able to confirm that the calls could be broken up into two perceptually distinct sounds that are shared across the calls in different arrangements.

“Furthermore, none of comprising elements carried the meaning of the calls confirming the elements are meaningless” she added.

“This system is reminiscent of the way humans use sounds to form meaningful words” co-author Prof Andy Russell from the University of Exeter explained.

These findings raise the exciting possibility that the capacity to generate meaning from meaningless building blocks is widespread in animals, but the authors caution there are still considerable differences between such systems and word generation in language.

They emphasize that a focus on the acoustic distinctiveness of sounds in meaningful animal vocalizations offers a promising approach to investigate the building blocks of non-human animal communication systems.

The research, chestnut-crowned babbler calls are composed of meaningless shared building blocks, is published today (9 September 2019) by PNAS, and also included researchers from the universities of Macquarie and New South Wales.

Contacts and sources:
Peter Thorley
University of Warwick 

 


Source:


Before It’s News® is a community of individuals who report on what’s going on around them, from all around the world.

Anyone can join.
Anyone can contribute.
Anyone can become informed about their world.

"United We Stand" Click Here To Create Your Personal Citizen Journalist Account Today, Be Sure To Invite Your Friends.

Please Help Support BeforeitsNews by trying our Natural Health Products below!


Order by Phone at 888-809-8385 or online at https://mitocopper.com M - F 9am to 5pm EST

Order by Phone at 866-388-7003 or online at https://www.herbanomic.com M - F 9am to 5pm EST

Order by Phone at 866-388-7003 or online at https://www.herbanomics.com M - F 9am to 5pm EST


Humic & Fulvic Trace Minerals Complex - Nature's most important supplement! Vivid Dreams again!

HNEX HydroNano EXtracellular Water - Improve immune system health and reduce inflammation.

Ultimate Clinical Potency Curcumin - Natural pain relief, reduce inflammation and so much more.

MitoCopper - Bioavailable Copper destroys pathogens and gives you more energy. (See Blood Video)

Oxy Powder - Natural Colon Cleanser!  Cleans out toxic buildup with oxygen!

Nascent Iodine - Promotes detoxification, mental focus and thyroid health.

Smart Meter Cover -  Reduces Smart Meter radiation by 96%! (See Video).

Report abuse

    Comments

    Your Comments
    Question   Razz  Sad   Evil  Exclaim  Smile  Redface  Biggrin  Surprised  Eek   Confused   Cool  LOL   Mad   Twisted  Rolleyes   Wink  Idea  Arrow  Neutral  Cry   Mr. Green

    MOST RECENT
    Load more ...

    SignUp

    Login

    Newsletter

    Email this story
    Email this story

    If you really want to ban this commenter, please write down the reason:

    If you really want to disable all recommended stories, click on OK button. After that, you will be redirect to your options page.