Subject
recursive, self-embedding, context-free grammar in birds
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[EDNOTE. Because Victor does not establish a specific VN connection in
this posting, I hasten to supply it: "(I talk in a daze, I walk in a
maze,/ I cannot get out, said the starling)" (Lolita, p. 255). - - SES]
I thought that the List might enjoy this abstract from today's issue of
"Nature"
Victor Fet
***************************
Nature 440, 1204-1207 (27 April 2006)
Recursive syntactic pattern learning by songbirds
Timothy Q. Gentner, Kimberly M. Fenn, Daniel Margoliash and Howard C.
Nusbaum
Humans regularly produce new utterances that are understood by other
members of the same language community. Linguistic theories account for
this ability through the use of syntactic rules (or generative grammars)
that describe the acceptable structure of utterances. The recursive,
hierarchical embedding of language units (for example, words or phrases
within shorter sentences) that is part of the ability to construct new
utterances minimally requires a 'context-free' grammar, that is more
complex than the 'finite-state' grammars thought sufficient to specify
the structure of all non-human communication signals. Recent hypotheses
make the central claim that the capacity for syntactic recursion forms
the computational core of a uniquely human language faculty. Here we
show that European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) accurately recognize
acoustic patterns defined by a recursive, self-embedding, context-free
grammar. They are also able to classify new patterns defined by the
grammar and reliably exclude agrammatical patterns. Thus, the capacity
to classify sequences from recursive, centre-embedded grammars is not
uniquely human. This finding opens a new range of complex syntactic
processing mechanisms to physiological investigation
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this posting, I hasten to supply it: "(I talk in a daze, I walk in a
maze,/ I cannot get out, said the starling)" (Lolita, p. 255). - - SES]
I thought that the List might enjoy this abstract from today's issue of
"Nature"
Victor Fet
***************************
Nature 440, 1204-1207 (27 April 2006)
Recursive syntactic pattern learning by songbirds
Timothy Q. Gentner, Kimberly M. Fenn, Daniel Margoliash and Howard C.
Nusbaum
Humans regularly produce new utterances that are understood by other
members of the same language community. Linguistic theories account for
this ability through the use of syntactic rules (or generative grammars)
that describe the acceptable structure of utterances. The recursive,
hierarchical embedding of language units (for example, words or phrases
within shorter sentences) that is part of the ability to construct new
utterances minimally requires a 'context-free' grammar, that is more
complex than the 'finite-state' grammars thought sufficient to specify
the structure of all non-human communication signals. Recent hypotheses
make the central claim that the capacity for syntactic recursion forms
the computational core of a uniquely human language faculty. Here we
show that European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) accurately recognize
acoustic patterns defined by a recursive, self-embedding, context-free
grammar. They are also able to classify new patterns defined by the
grammar and reliably exclude agrammatical patterns. Thus, the capacity
to classify sequences from recursive, centre-embedded grammars is not
uniquely human. This finding opens a new range of complex syntactic
processing mechanisms to physiological investigation
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm