<
https://theconversation.com/whalesong-patterns-follow-a-universal-law-of-human-language-new-research-finds-249271>
"All known human languages display a surprising pattern: the most frequent word
in a language is twice as frequent as the second most frequent, three times as
frequent as the third, and so on. This is known as Zipf’s law.
Researchers have hunted for evidence of this pattern in communication among
other species, but until now no other examples have been found.
In new research published today in
Science, our team of experts in whale
song, linguistics and developmental psychology analysed eight years’ of song
recordings from humpback whales in New Caledonia. Led by Inbal Arnon from the
Hebrew University, Ellen Garland from the University of St Andrews, and Simon
Kirby from the University of Edinburgh, we used techniques inspired by the way
human infants learn language to analyse humpback whale song.
We discovered that the same Zipfian pattern universally found across human
languages also occurs in whale song. This complex signalling system, like human
language, is culturally learned by each individual from others."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
