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Perhaps, but the scientists involved went from "whale songs are like groans" to "whale songs are like talking". The 'breakthrough' they were describing is that

Perhaps, but the scientists involved went from "whale songs are like groans" to "whale songs are like talking". The 'breakthrough' they were describing is that visibility into a complex, and repeatable, substructure to the songs shows that those songs could contain more complex "words." If you have ever tried to communicate by groaning only (which an acquaintance of mine was forced to do while recovering in the ICU once) there are very limited things you can say, and it often reduces to you asking questions and them producing a "yes" groan, or a "no" groan. They can't 'tell' you a whole lot. As a result of their research they are getting closer to the underlying structure (which others will look for in other species of whales) and with that they may be able create situations where they could start testing the concepts that might be in that structure. That sounds kind of breakthroughish to me :-)

sinkasapa 3y ago
Having read the article. I don't know where one would get the idea that it said anything meaningful about the songs being like "talking", which implies a whole host of features that were not even mentioned. They made analogies with human language phenomena such as suprasegmental features but really this was about there being newly discovered patterns in the sounds. These were not correlated to any specific meaning or purpose. We need those if one is going to talk about the whale song as a communicative system at all, much less a language. With reference to something like Hockett's design features, we have a modality, but despite the existence of a pattern, we don't even know if there is discreteness, necessarily. It is kind of like how children will be taught about atoms and think about the solar system. The analogy may be meaningful or not. The article relies on the readiness of the reader to anthropomorphize the noises made by the animals and misleads them.
- ChuckMcM 3y ago
  This from the paper's abstract: Finally, we control for whale movement and present several pieces of evidence suggesting that the observed patterns are not artifacts, but are actively controlled by sperm whales. We also show that the two coda vowels (the a-vowel and i-vowel) are actively exchanged by sperm whales in dialogues. The uncovered spectral properties suggest that codas are highly compositional, more informative, and more complex than previously thought. This from the article: “If our findings are correct, it means that the communication of sperm whales is much more complex and can carry more information than previously thought,” the researchers concluded. The researchers here make two observations, the whales intentionally use specific forms in their songs and the specific forms are sequenced differently but intentionally. For biologists this is significant because it differs from a common form of "singing" or "calls" that each have a specific meaning but they are not internally variegated like these calls are. What the researchers propose (or hypothesize) is that this intentional and varied voicing within a "song" suggests the whales are exchanging much more detailed information than "threat" or "help" or "food here" etc.
jacquesm 3y ago
Morse?

sinkasapa 3y ago

Having read the article. I don't know where one would get the idea that it said anything meaningful about the songs being like "talking", which implies a whole host of features that were not even mentioned. They made analogies with human language phenomena such as suprasegmental features but really this was about there being newly discovered patterns in the sounds. These were not correlated to any specific meaning or purpose. We need those if one is going to talk about the whale song as a communicative system at all, much less a language. With reference to something like Hockett's design features, we have a modality, but despite the existence of a pattern, we don't even know if there is discreteness, necessarily. It is kind of like how children will be taught about atoms and think about the solar system. The analogy may be meaningful or not. The article relies on the readiness of the reader to anthropomorphize the noises made by the animals and misleads them.

ChuckMcM 3y ago
This from the paper's abstract: Finally, we control for whale movement and present several pieces of evidence suggesting that the observed patterns are not artifacts, but are actively controlled by sperm whales. We also show that the two coda vowels (the a-vowel and i-vowel) are actively exchanged by sperm whales in dialogues. The uncovered spectral properties suggest that codas are highly compositional, more informative, and more complex than previously thought. This from the article: “If our findings are correct, it means that the communication of sperm whales is much more complex and can carry more information than previously thought,” the researchers concluded. The researchers here make two observations, the whales intentionally use specific forms in their songs and the specific forms are sequenced differently but intentionally. For biologists this is significant because it differs from a common form of "singing" or "calls" that each have a specific meaning but they are not internally variegated like these calls are. What the researchers propose (or hypothesize) is that this intentional and varied voicing within a "song" suggests the whales are exchanging much more detailed information than "threat" or "help" or "food here" etc.

jacquesm 3y ago

Morse?