Page 1 of 1

Off-topic: Animal language with grammar

Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 4:01 pm
by yong321
Sorry this is neither about travels nor culture. But it's still interesting.
First evidence that birds tweet using grammar
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn ... g-grammar/
A Kyoto University researcher shows that bengal finches chirp with syntax, not just words.
(Moderator, feel free to remove it.)

Re: Off-topic: Animal language with grammar

Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 4:03 pm
by Iversen
At least one moderator doesn't feel any inclination to remove it, and there isn't a specific section dedicated to birds and other animals.

Some of the apes who have learnt sign or symbol languages have also composed messages consisting of several elements, and you could argue that this represents a simple syntactical sequence. However I haven't heard about experiments where 'ungrammatical' combinations of artificial signs/sounds were ignored or frowned upon by another species.

Re: Off-topic: Animal language with grammar

Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 4:35 pm
by Tillumadoguenirurm
Iversen wrote:At least one moderator doesn't feel any inclination to remove it, and there isn't a specific section dedicated to birds and other animals.

Some of the apes who have learnt sign or symbol languages have also composed messages consisting of several elements, and you could argue that this represents a simple syntactical sequence. However I haven't heard about experiments where 'ungrammatical' combinations of artificial signs/sounds were ignored or frowned upon by another species.


Do you have any suggestions how to prove ignoring or frowning?...weird sentence...

Re: Off-topic: Animal language with grammar

Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 5:10 pm
by DaveBee
Iversen wrote: However I haven't heard about experiments where 'ungrammatical' combinations of artificial signs/sounds were ignored or frowned upon by another species.
I'm not clear that that is what this showed. They played four nonsense jumbles of birdsong, one of which provoked a reaction. I don't see that they make a convincing claim for why that one jumble provoked a reaction.
The birds reacted to only one of the four jumbled versions, called SEQ2, as if they noticed it violated some rule of grammar, whereas the other three remixes didn’t. Almost 90 per cent of the birds tested responded in this way. “This indicates the existence of a specific rule in the sequential orderings of syllables in their songs, shared within the social community,”
I think it means that their syllables can add up to a word/message. But I'd assumed they already did that 'I'm here', 'danger' etc.