For the diversity of all languages in the world, human language still follows several universal patterns. These work even deeper than grammar or syntax. They are rooted in statistical laws that predict how often a particular word is used and how long those words will take. Think of it as a built-in guardrail to make language easier to learn and use.
And now, scientists have discovered some of the same patterns in the vocalization of whales. Two new studies published this week show that despite the vast evolutionary distance between us, they converge on solutions similar to the problems that humans and whales communicate through sound. Inbal Arnon, professor of Hebrew Psychology in Jerusalem, said: One of the research co-authors.
Arnon and her colleagues, the paper was published Thursday Science, Analysed eight years of humpback whale song recordings from New Caledonia in the South Pacific, and they It is closely followed by the principles known ZIPF frequency law. This law of mathematical ability, a characteristic of human language, is observed by the frequency of word usage. The most common words in any language are often shown at the second most common, and at the third most common frequency. Above.
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Listen to the Humpback Whale Song:
But before they analyzed the recording, researchers sought to a segment similar to the word (in important terms, meaninglessly meaningless) in the flow of otherworldly groans, screams and moans. It had to be identified. They found themselves in the same predicament as their newborn baby. Of course, that’s where they sought guidance. Human infants “get this continuous acoustic signal,” says Arnon. “And they have to figure out where the words are.”
Baby strategies are simple. Listen to unexpected sound combinations in adult speeches. Every time you identify it, you probably find the boundary Intermediate Because words, they are unlikely to occur Inside words.
Incredibly, humpback whales may be using the same approach. When researchers segmented whale songs based on theseTransition probability” – As human infants do, they conform to the ZIPF gloves-like law of frequency. Meanwhile, 1,000 arbitrarily shuffled elements of the data were not near the match. The transition probability outcome strongly suggests that it is not a product of random chances. Expert at St Andrews University in Scotland. “We could have discovered these same structures. Did we think we would? Hell no.”
Why do the same communication behavior evolve independently between whales and humans? Was that last ancestor a clever creature that lived around 100 million years ago? Now, the distribution of words according to the ZIPF frequency law, or the Zipfian distribution, is Helps to children understand language. “If things are organized like that with your input, you’re going to learn them better,” says Simon Kirby, cognitive scientist at the University of Edinburgh and co-author of New. Science paper.
In other words, the structure of language is primarily the product of how it is passed from one generation to the next. Therefore, the team inferred that ZIPF’s law of frequency could be culturally learned not only in humans but anywhere else (transmitted from one individual to another). The group includes what Kirby calls “a strange bunch of ragtag seeds,” including songbirds, bats, non-human primates, elephants, seals, dolphins and whales. It is believed that almost every other animal that communicates loudly, from dogs to frogs to fish, does so through genetically programmed and unlearned signals.
We know that at least the whales share important elements of our own communication systems. This is a discovery that fits with growing attitudes among scientists who are not as unique as they once thought. Rather, our linguistic abilities lie on the slandering of physical and cognitive traits, many of which extend throughout the animal kingdom.
In another paper published in Advances in science On Wednesday, Mason Youngblood, a postdoctoral researcher at Stony Brook University, discovered Evidence of two more such traits in whale vocalization: One is a concise law, which states that when applied to human language, the more common the words are, the shorter the word tends to be, and vice versa. The other is Menzerath’s law, which states that the longer the linguistic structure (such as a sentence), the shorter its components (such as a sentence clause).
Both patterns were particularly strong in the humpback whale song, and both appeared in various other species. All of these laws are about efficiency. They explain how animals “maximise the amount of information they convey with minimal amounts of energy.” says Youngblood.
Just as human language comparisons are attractive, researchers warn against reading these similarities too much. “Whale songs are not language,” Garland says that most experts agree that animal “words” have no semantic meaning. (Not like music. That also shows Zipf’s law of frequency.)
But as far as similarities are concerned, they are impressive. St Andrews University biologist Luke Rendell was not involved in either study, but these findings “how evolution converges, perhaps constrained by a certain kind of thing.” We believe we can tell us something deeper and deeper about it. Learn. “In other words, they can let us know about the range of complex communication possibilities of all kinds.
Similarly, Kirby is where the ZIPF frequency (and perhaps other language laws) law is “a kind of fingerprint of these culturally evolved systems,” where animals have crossed the threshold for cultural learning. suggests that it may be present in “This is probably a very basic feature of the organisation of the cognitive system,” he adds.
