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Bird Brains Explain How Humans Learn to Talk
eaglebtc writes "A team of neuroscientists at MIT have made tremendous progress in understanding how birds learn to sing: a part of the brain called the basal ganglia is primarily responsible for controlling the learning of movement and the production of speech. This circuitry is also present in humans, and it is the same way that a baby's random babbling eventually becomes the proficient speech of adults. It is hoped that this research can provide further insights into Parkinson's Disease, an inherited genetic condition that causes rapid breakdown of motor control and speech production. The full research study is available as a downloadable PDF."
Considering our common ancestor was so far back, what's more likely: parallel and independent development of speech in more recent years, or a singular development WAY back in the day? If the case is the latter, we should expect to find this evolutionary trait in quite a few species out there.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
The parrot and cockatoo species of birds offer some amazing insight into the likely evolution of intelligence and social interaction outside the human/mammal pathway.
To start with, birds in general have their origins traced back to dinosaur-era reptiles. That's a pretty huge developmental shift between humanity and bird.
Yet, many species of birds can not only learn to speak human words, but they can learn context and how to use those words to manipulate people and other creatures. The birds in my parents pet store have learned more than just how to act in order to get treats, but how to manipulate people and other animals for seemingly the sheer pleasures and social interaction of it. It's hard to think of such use of intelligence as a base condition of animals that were ancestors of both mammals and dinosaurs - it seems more likely that intelligence itself is an independantly developed extension of logic.
As a smaller-scale example, Cockatoos are a more ancient species of bird than modern parrots. They also develop intelligence of many sorts, though of a more social nature. They can learn to speak words and immitate, but use the manipulation of those words on a more purely social level than parrots. It's somewhat amazing that such a mobile and diverse set of species as birds can each acquire different uses for language and intelligence - perhaps if it weren't for the necissary limitations of flight (weight, head-body aspect ratio), the intelligent species of our planet would have been birds, not mammals.
This is no hard evidence, but it also seems to make the possibility of intelligent life outside our known observed environments seem less unlikely too - especially if it can develop in so seemingly independant circumstances, despite a somewhat shared environment.
Ryan Fenton
Some linguistics & psycholinguistics (e.g Norm Chompsky and Steve Pinker) argue the human brain is unique in that it is able to quickly master the complex grammar present in all human languages.
In fact there is even a mathematical proof that seems to indicate that human languages should be technically unlearn-able (google: EM Gold language grammar - "Language identification in the limit"). IIRC - the synopsis being that, human languages are at least as sophisticated as context free languages (and can to some degree be modeled by context free languages) and the grammar of context free languages should not be learnable from the sort of linguistic input available to a child.
So...anyhow, I'm not so sure if studying how birds learn a sequence of sounds really gets at the more interesting aspects of human language acquisition. I mean it's probably interesting in terms of how animals, and even people, learn to produce simple sequences of sounds.
But, for human language? Or, at least for the interesting, i.e. uniquely human, parts of it? For that you probably need to either study people, or possibly very similar animals like other primates.
TFA is Slashdotted at the moment, but I don't think this has terribly much to do with Chomsky's work.
It's important to note the difference between the acquisition of *language* and the acquisition of *speech*. Congentially deaf persons are capable of acquiring the former quite naturally, in the form of Sign, which is a language (or rather, are languages) entirely of it's own. (Signed English, etc. are "hacks" in the perjorative sense -- a congenitally deaf person does not "think" in Signed English, but in some other symbolic language [ASL generally]).
Babies are capable of learning symbolic languages long before they are capable of learning speech. The two are distinct categories of development -- So, really, this doesn't "go as deep" as Chomsky's work, which concerns language development in general, and not speech in particular.
[I'm a bit drunk right now, so I'm AC.}
And since I'm AC, I'll go ahead and say that I think Chomsky is a fucking choad for his non-linguistics "work", which consists of getting insanely rich by writing books critical of every political view but his version of anarcho-syndicalism. -- but feel free do mod me independently of this viewpoint.
There may be a double-standard, true - but you're still being interesting to linguists.
(Check out Dr. Alexander Z. Guiora's work on "The Effects of Experimentally Induced Change in Ego States on Pronunciation Ability in a Second Language." (and a few more studies in Language Learning) He and his colleagues, back in the '70s, examined the way impaired subjects (drunk, hypnotized, under the influence of valium...) pronounced foreign languages they knew. Interestingly enough, these subjects had better pronunciation when drunk etc. than sober! So it's all about making yourself interesting to someone and having their grants pay for the fun...)
Watch out for the penguins!
Exactly. This is why parrots that grow up in human environments can learn to talk. Now they aren't necessarily able to produce complete sentences, but they'll say 'bye' when you leave, 'hello' when you arrive, 'food' when they're hungry, and tons of other action-related words. They'll even mimic your actions to get other animals (or people) to come. They'll call the cats by saying "here kitty kitty", whistle for the dogs, or mimic the phone ringing to get a human :)
From what I've seen, he has learned many phrases and words over the years, and is able to successfully use them in correct conversational context. For example, if you insult him, he will reply with a stinging "Cat!" He also asks "what's that?" when he sees a new item in a room, and laughs at jokes in movies.
What relates to this article, however, is his habit of creating random vocalizations. Often he will speak in a chaotic combination of "human-like" noises and settle on a couple that pique his fancy. A few days ago he was angry with me and started his mumblings while on my girlfriend's shoulder. He leaned closer to her ear and after a couple seconds he said something that closely resembled "Bosco bites people, Bosco bites people, Bosco bites (my name)." It was quite eerie.
My other random though was the possible connections this has to creativity. Is this the section of the brain that humans use while composing random, new music? What about scat singers who sing random combinations of sounds?
6x9=42
I keep Cockatoos. I never intended to have such large birds as pets, and would most certainly not encourage it. I landed up with them as a "gift" as the previous owner found them too difficult.
I would put their overall intelligence at around the 4 or 5 year human. With the addition that they are the most expert lock pickers.
Imagine if you will the tantrums of a 4/5 year old, add that the 4/5 year can fly, has a set of tools like a combination hammer, ice-pick, file, and nut cracker, and absolutely knows which items dotted about are the most valuable to destroy.
Often one of them imitates the phone ringing as I am about to leave the house. I could swear the blessed things are all sharing the joke.
I am often left pondering: who here is the pet?
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