Animal linguistics: Exploring referentiality and compositionality in bird calls,Ecological Research

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Animal linguistics: Exploring referentiality and compositionality in bird calls
Ecological Research ( IF 1.7 ) Pub Date : 2021-01-05 , DOI: 10.1111/1440-1703.12200
Toshitaka N. Suzuki ₁

Affiliation

Establishing the theory of language evolution is an ongoing challenge in science. One profitable approach in this regard is to seek the origins of linguistic capabilities by comparing language with the vocal communication systems of closely related relatives (i.e., the great apes). However, several key capabilities of language appear to be absent in non‐human primates, which limits the range of studies, such as direct phylogenetic comparison. A further informative approach lies in identifying convergent features in phylogenetically distant animals and conducting comparative studies. This approach is particularly useful with respect to establishing general rules for the evolution of linguistic capabilities. In this article, I review recent findings on linguistic capabilities in a passerine bird species, the Japanese tit (Parus minor). Field experiments have revealed that Japanese tits produce unique alarm calls when encountering predatory snakes, which serve to enhance the visual attention of call receivers with respect to snake‐like objects. Moreover, tits often combine discrete types of meaningful calls into fixed‐ordered sequences according to an ordering rule, conveying a compositional message to receivers. These findings indicate that two core capabilities of language, namely, referentiality and compositionality, have independently evolved in the avian lineage. I describe how these linguistic capabilities can be examined under field conditions and discuss how such research may contribute to exploring the origins and evolution of language.

中文翻译：

动物语言学：探索鸟叫中的指称性和组成性

建立语言进化理论是科学领域的一个持续挑战。在这方面，一种有利可图的方法是通过将语言与亲戚（即大猩猩）的语音交流系统进行比较来寻找语言能力的起源。但是，在非人类的灵长类动物中似乎缺少几种主要的语言能力，这限制了研究的范围，例如直接的系统发育比较。另一种有用的方法是确定系统发育距离较远的动物的收敛特征并进行比较研究。对于建立语言能力发展的一般规则而言，这种方法特别有用。在本文中，我回顾了有关雀形目鸟类日本山雀（小帕鲁斯（）。现场实验表明，日本山雀在遇到掠食性蛇时会发出独特的警报声，这有助于增强呼叫接收者对蛇状物体的视觉注意力。此外，山雀通常根据有序规则将有意义的呼叫的离散类型组合成固定有序的序列，从而将合成消息传达给接收者。这些发现表明，在鸟类谱系中语言的两个核心功能，即指称性和构成性，已经独立发展。我描述了如何在野外条件下检查这些语言能力，并讨论了这种研究如何有助于探索语言的起源和演变。

更新日期：2021-03-11

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