Babbling Birds

Abstract

At first glance, the chestnut-crowned babbler’s capacity for communication may seem comparable to the way humans form meaningful words from meaningless phonemes. Should this line of thought be taken seriously, or is this one for the birds? Theoretical linguist Riny Huybregts critically dissects claims that the babbler’s capacity for vocal calls provides an evolutionary basis for human speech.

Animal communication in linguistic & cognitive perspective

“…The response is that while these discoveries are important and fascinating on their own terms, they provide evidence only of finite combinations, and not of the sort of hierarchical structures that enable infinitude, and hence not of the basic, foundational property of language that is, ex hypothesi, most in need of explanation (e.g. Hauser et al, 2014;Bolhuis et al, 2014;Berwick, 2016;Huybregts, 2020; see e.g. Townsend et al, 2018 for a reply).…”

“…For instance, the data on chestnut-crowned babblers, summarised above, is approached and interpreted very differently by linguists working in the generative tradition, than by the team of biologists and linguists who conducted the research (for debate see e.g. Huybregts, 2020;Engesser & Fitch, 2021). Another example is debate over the possible existence of 'reference' in non-human primate communication (e.g.…”