Meaningful syntactic structure in songbird vocalizations?
Name
journal.pbio.2005157.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
910.42 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
cbcdf7d0382fde8267afdeff4165e52c
Author(s)
Bolhuis, Johan J.
Beckers, Gabriel J. L.
Huybregts, Marinus A. C.
Berwick, Robert C
Everaert, Martin B. H.
Date Issued
June 2018
Journal
PLoS Biology
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Citation
Bolhuis, Johan J. et al. "Meaningful syntactic structure in songbird vocalizations?" PLoS Biology 16, 6 (June 2018): e2005157 © 2018 Bolhuis et al.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The faculty of language is thought to be uniquely human. Recently, it has been claimed that songbirds are able to associate meaning with sound, comparable to the way that humans do. In human language, the meaning of expressions (semantics) is dependent on a mind-internal hierarchical structure (syntax). Meaning is associated with structure through the principle of compositionality, whereby the meaning of a complex expression is a function of the meaning of its constituent parts and the mode of composition. We argue that while recent experimental findings on songbird call sequences offer exciting novel insights into animal communication, despite claims to the contrary, they are quite unlike what we find in human language. There are indeed remarkable behavioral and neural parallels in auditory-vocal imitation learning between songbirds and human infants that are absent in our closest evolutionary relatives, the great apes. But so far, there is no convincing evidence of syntax-determined meaning in nonhuman animals.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2005157
