Meaningful call combinations and compositional processing in the southern pied babbler

Engesser, Sabrina; Ridley, Amanda R; Townsend, Simon W

Meaningful call combinations and compositional processing in the southern pied babbler

Journal Article

2016

Journal Title

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

Link to Journal

https://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1600970113

Department

FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology

Faculty

Faculty of Science

Abstract

Human language is syntactic in its nature: meaningful words are assembled into larger meaningful phrases or sentences. How unique this ability is to humans remains surprisingly unclear. A considerable body of work has indicated that birds are capable of combining sounds into large, elaborate songs, but there is currently no evidence suggesting that these structures are syntactic. Here, we provide important evidence for this ability in a highly social bird. Specifically, pied babblers combine two functionally distinct vocalizations into a larger sequence, the function of which is related to the function of its parts. Our work adds important evidence to the variation and distribution of combinatorial vocal mechanisms outside humans and provides insights into potentially early forms of human syntactic communication.