| Popis: |
The temporal patterning of vocal communication signals is widespread and suggests parallels to human linguistic capacities. Two levels of syntactic structure may be defined: phonological and lexical. Lexical syntax involves the patterning of meaningful units into longer, meaningful sequences, as in human language. In phonological syntax, a sequence of otherwise meaningless sound units conveys meaning. The syntactic complexity of animal vocalizations has been measured using information theoretic analyses and formal grammars across a range of taxa. Birds and nonhuman primates have been the most extensively studied. Phonological syntax is common across a wide range of groups and can involve rule or rule-like organization of vocal sequences. Lexical syntax is very rare – having been observed only in nonhuman primates and then in a limited capacity that may lack open compositional rules. |
