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Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird calls (2016)
- EGreg 9y agoSomeone should send this to Noam Chomsky.
- chicob 9y agoYes. A parrot could tell him: "You won't believe what a Japanese great tit just told me..."
- ppod 9y agoIt doesn't make any sense to "approach the caller" and then scan for danger. The sounds could be understood non-compositionally and the actions worked out pragmatically. It's like saying that a monkey responds to "peel the banana, eat the banana" in the correct manner but not "eat the banana, peel the banana".
- sidlls 9y agoI'm not a linguist, but this seems like a wrong analysis to me. It seems to me you're imposing a specific word order paradigm where it may not be applicable. Perhaps these birds "parse" compositions in order of most recently received (e.g. as something like a LIFO), or by some other rule that is nevertheless (compositionally) significant.
- thaumasiotes 9y agoThis study's "conclusion" is grossly unwarranted. But I don't think your criticism works either; the study doesn't mention any temporal order to the actions. It only states that when hearing a recorded compound call containing the directions "look for predators" and "come closer" in that order, the birds considered as a group take both of those actions at the same level that they do when hearing either direction in isolation, whereas when hearing a synthesized compound call of the same directions in the other order, they take neither action (again, considered as a group -- the overall level of scanning-for-predators behavior doesn't rise compared to hearing background noise). They conclude that because synthesized cry YX gets a different (null) response than natural cry XY, the compound cry must conform to a compositional syntax. This makes no sense. For one thing, the compound cry carries zero additional meaning beyond that of its components -- as if hearing "the man ate the tiger" were no different from hearing "EAT TIGER MAN". But more importantly, the point of compositional syntax is that components may appear anywhere[1] within the structure of the phrase -- we can use "tiger" as the object of one sentence and the subject of another, or inside a clause embedded in a complex sentence, because the syntax will tell us which is which. All these people have demonstrated is that either (1) there is an ordering constraint on delivering two messages at once; or (2) these birds can tell the difference between recorded calls and synthesized calls. Compare the English auxiliary verb system, which is non-compositional with ordering constraints. A verb may be modified by any or all of the following: first, a modal ("can try"), second, perfective have ("has tried"), third, progressive be ("were trying"), fourth, passive be or get ("got fired"; "was eaten"). While there are several different options in the first slot, and two (plus absence) in the fourth, it is impossible to substitute a meaningful phrase in for any of these. [1] Obviously not anywhere, but inside many different component phrases.
- louthy 9y agoThe title immediately made me think of To Dissect a Mockingbird: http://dkeenan.com/Lambda/ http://dkeenan.com/Lambda/
- trendia 9y agoListen to recordings here: https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-ticker/great-tits-sing-syntax https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-ticker/great-tits-s...
- chicob 9y agoNice!
- projectorlochsa 9y agoIt all evolves slowly but steadily. Given an animal that can produce sounds, if sounds are meaningful enough it can be a big advantage. Given more animals that produce sounds, the ones that can transmit more information will survive. It's weird to think that there's nothing between complex (human) and simple (sheep) when it was the result of a gradual evolution. Big jumps are rare.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago>when it was the result of a gradual evolution // What's the evidence showing it was gradual? Big jumps may be unusual statistically [what set are you sampling? 'planets with apex predators that are bipedal mammalians' looks like too small of a sample to make statistical inferences??] but then so is genesis and it seems that happened.
- devoply 9y agopunctuated evolution stipulates this very thing.
- flukus 9y agoI remember a study many years ago that found that bird songs get longer and more complex for captive birds than they do for wilds ones. It seemed to suggest that a dense population and more free time were very important to the evolution of complex language.
- euyyn 9y agoWell, there were plenty of other Homo that, if my understanding is correct, we "took care of" :)
- ouid 9y agobig jumps in the domain are rare, but bifurcations can easily be the result of little jumps in the domain. The map of genome to organism is not "differentiable".
- panic 9y agoI'm not sure if it's as clear-cut as you say. It seems like complex sounds could be harder to differentiate and could take more energy to recognize. What specifically will kill you if you transmit less information?
- chicob 9y agoI wish there were links for sound files in the article...
- foxbarrington 9y agohttps://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-ticker/great-tits-sing-syntax https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-ticker/great-tits-s...
- chicob 9y agoThanks!
- peterburkimsher 9y agoMod: Please add the year (2016)
- gyrgtyn 9y agoThis book [1] is fascinating, and there's not much out there with the same info that isn't buy the same author or his circle of friends. There are a couple youtube videos. Humans (who's livelyhood depend on it) can understand what birds are talking about. There's a story in there about an african safari tour guide driving along slowly with tourists and when he hears a certain sound, pulls over and shows his customers a rad snake or a lion. One of the themes of the book is (re)learning how to do this, and how it can be therapeutic(?) and is a great form of _meditation_ The book's site had bird call recordings (probably not the same bird as the OP!) for those that are looking for them. [1] https://www.hmhbooks.com/whattherobinknows/ https://www.hmhbooks.com/whattherobinknows/
- syphilis2 9y agoI've recently rediscovered how intelligible birds can be. I can't claim to understand what they're talking about, but I suggest to anyone with some free time to go outside at a time when the birds are active and to spend minutes focusing on their different calls. You really will begin to recognize the sounds and link them to behavior or events.
- mirimir 9y agoDevices can share data via sound. One approach is called Chirp.[0] So maybe birdsong encodes more information than we think. 0) https://www.chirp.io/ https://www.chirp.io/
- mrdrozdov 9y agoReceived: 20 August 2015 Accepted: 05 February 2016 Published online: 08 March 2016 Views: 19,562 Citations: 13
- themgt 9y agoOne time I was trimming a huge set of overgrown bamboo/weeds in my yard, and this bird yapping slowly drifted into my consciousness like, pay attention, alert! I looked up and this tiny bird was darting around the power line and other branches above me, directly facing at me and chirp chirp chirping in a distressed seeming way. I looked on for maybe 20-30 seconds a bit confused then went back to the trimming, but barely a moment later I saw what I realized was a nest filled with eggs wedged in among the top branches I was just about to cut down. I gave up on the trimming and went inside to ponder bird intelligence & cross-species communication.
- gyrgtyn 9y agoReminds me of another story in the What The Robin Knows about a group of elephants charging across the savanna, in the direction of some small trees (that would just get bowled over by elephants), and a bird getting the elephants to change direction by doing what you describe.
- agumonkey 9y agoI felt my brain lighten significantly. I'm not surprised that animals can communicate "simple" signals like danger, fear, etc. But how would I love for them to be able to exchange finer and longer messages. That would be so fun to imagine we were deaf for thousands of years and also that would make lots of new things to experience. ps: cats and dogs
- midgetjones 9y agoI still swear that my old cat had a special meow that sounded like "hello".
- Pamar 9y agoPaul Watzlawick in his "Pragmatics of Human Communications" explains that (at least so far) animals seem unable to meta-communicate (in the sense of communicating about communication). If I remember correctly (it has been decades) he mentions as an example that cats are perfectly capable to communicate "I want food", using a combination of vocal and "gestures". What they cannot do is communicate something like "Listen, I have used the meow for gimme food 9 times already, what are you? deaf? stupid? or just trying to punish me for when I threw up on the carpet?"
- lngnmn 9y agoBullshit. That requires brain capacities birds does not possess. These calls are random variations learned from experience (by mimicking other birds). With enough of machine learning I could publish that trees have a sign-language.
- 36bydesign 9y agoHow are you so sure what a bird’s brain is capable of? And fwiw trees and plants do have chemical means of communication.
- kleer001 9y agoYou, my friend, need to do a little more comparative neurology research and keep up to date with findings in brain science.
- lngnmn 9y agoI would stay with MIT linguists, if you would permit me. No animal signal system has a regular structure and no animal has a brain capacity for producing an arbitrary sequence of phonemes. Only mimicking capabilities. Thank you.
- tudorw 9y agoyou've met all the animals ?
- lngnmn 9y agoI've met a few good books.
- tudorw 9y agoThen you should know better than to make sweeping generalisations and talking in absolutes, I can show you many scientific books from the 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's that are filled with untrue assumptions, to state that no animal is capable of language when we still no so little about 'brain capacity' seems, premature.
- yread 9y agoI've recently binge watched Attenborough's documentaries and I came across this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPbWJPsBPdA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPbWJPsBPdA These birds spending a ridiculous amount of time building intricate monuments. They are picky about colors and styles and one specie builds very specific structures. Birds just have so much free time.
- agumonkey 9y agoWhen they're not avoiding cats that is.
- hyperpallium 9y agoFor those like me who didn't know, there's a pdf, under "tools" menu at top. Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms10986.pdf https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms10986.pdf
- dovdovdov 9y ago"call treatments played to Japanese great tits." umm
- mcbits 9y agoThe blue jays around my yard make a particular toot when a human gets too close. It's reliable enough that I know someone is walking by the house whenever I hear it. (There is not a lot of foot traffic here.) They don't seem to make the same noise for dogs and cats. The squirrels are better dog and cat alarms. I've pondered whether the toot might mean "human" or "oh shit" or something else. Supposing it is denotational like "human", I'm also very curious if different populations of blue jays use vocalizations differently in places with different threats. That would imply the sounds are taught and learned, which I'd say is a stronger indicator of language than, say, sounds that are instinctively understood but happen to be compositional.
- agumonkey 9y agoI wonder how much tribes know and rely on this kind of signals in their lives; probably implicitely.
- beeeebo 9y agoGreat place for a voice recognition program that can add to our knowledge about the environment
- buserror 9y agoI swear I have a blackbird that does the Star Wars theme song pretty regularly. I was floored the first time I heard it! I also know the (surviving) magpies also have a name for me that is probably not polite. That's the price to pay to have any /other/ birds in my garden...