GRAMMAR, SYNTAX, AND THE LANGUAGE OF (SOME) BIRDS

Regular readers of this website, and more importantly, the paying members who follow our members' vidchats, will know that one of the subjects that often fixes our attention and which has been a consistent subject for our high octane speculations is consciousness and intelligence, and specifically that of some animals. People know that I am fascinated by the signs of intelligence and emotion in a wide variety of very unrelated creatures, like octopus, crows and other corvids, parrots, dogs, and so on. While no one, I think, would put any of these creatures on the same level as humans, it seems to become increasingly clear with research that the higher beasts have some form of consciousness, intelligence, and emotion. It may be qualitatively very different than ours, but that is the point: it is a certain qualitative thing, not reducible, it would seem, to the mere number of neurons or synapses or neurophysiological structure. Those things may be indicators of that mysterious qualitative distinction, but they do not exhaustively define or circumscribe it. We're left with a mystery that, the deeper we probe ourselves and other creatures, the more mysterious it becomes. I suspect part of the answer to this conundrum may lie in that ancient notion subscribed to by the Stoics and some of the early church fathers, that all living things have their own "spermatikos logos", their own "seminal reason", and thus are manifestations and reflections of the superintending Logos of all things.  And that link to spematikos logos has always indicated something else since classical times: logos implies speech, and therefore, language. And language implies order (synax and grammar) and the ability to recognize symbols and patterns as communication.

The lack of apparent speech or communication in animals led to an ancient "schism" of sorts, between those who believed that this lack symbolized the lack of consciousness, intelligence, and emotion in animals because no language could be perceived, and those who maintained that the lack of a perception of language was not the same thing as the lack of language (and all that accompanied it) itself. The latter group - in which I would certainly include myself - pointed to our own experience with pets. No one who has had a pet or formed close emotional bounds with an animal is unfamiliar with the fact that behind their grunts, whines, squeals, barks, chirping, fluttering, wags, jumps, and so on, there is not some sort of communication. We grow to recognize our dog's "affirmative barks" as opposed to its "I'm thinking about it" barks, or its "no way, you dumb two-legs" barks (the latter in my case usually followed by a heavy sigh of frustration that what is self-evident to her is not to me). The point is, that this ancient split may account for the rise, in ancient times and also within esoteric lore, of the notion of "the language of the birds", an actual language birds use, which we humans either once understood and lost, or never understood at all.

So when this fascinating article came in from M.D. (with our gratitude), I knew I had to blog about it, because it also formed the occasion for another of my Wile E. Coyote runs and leaps of the end of the speculation twig into the canyon of speculation below. Here are the articles:

Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird calls

Japanese bird researcher 1st in the world to prove animals use words, grammar

The first article is, in fact, the abstract for a scientific paper, and it is a whopper doozy, because it suggests that in a particular species of bird in Japan, that its calls actually are not random at all, but conform to basic combinatorial, i.e., grammatical and syntactic, rules, and that the birds actually create various orders of notes in order to communicate specific things:

Human language can express limitless meanings from a finite set of words based on combinatorial rules (i.e., compositional syntax). Although animal vocalizations may be comprised of different basic elements (notes), it remains unknown whether compositional syntax has also evolved in animals. Here we report the first experimental evidence for compositional syntax in a wild animal species, the Japanese great tit (Parus minor). Tits have over ten different notes in their vocal repertoire and use them either solely or in combination with other notes. Experiments reveal that receivers extract different meanings from ‘ABC’ (scan for danger) and ‘D’ notes (approach the caller), and a compound meaning from ‘ABC–D’ combinations. However, receivers rarely scan and approach when note ordering is artificially reversed (‘D–ABC’). Thus, compositional syntax is not unique to human language but may have evolved independently in animals as one of the basic mechanisms of information transmission.

Now, that's a far cry from a human grammar of - let's say - German or English, with their tenses, moods, and voices of verbs, and indeed, that may be one of the subtle and qualitative differences between humans and animals, for in this "bird grammar" there's no conception of time. There are merely objects and events in relationship to the bird(s) under study. Time, and further study, will tell if that speculation has any merit. But what is fascinating here is the implication that maybe that ancient and esoteric notion of a "languages of the birds" was not so far fetched at all, for here, with this particular species, we are dealing with distinct orders of notes and sounds to communicate specific things. It is a very simple and elemental grammar. The real test, for science, is to figure out and determine how long this may have been going on: was it always there (as I suspect), or did it arise recently, and if so, why?

One thing seems clear, though: we've watched octopus and crows solve complex multi-step problems, and, in the case of octopus, we've watched them learn simply by observing other octopuses solving problems. In my case, I actually experienced my friend's African gray parrot formulating a complete, and grammatically correct, sentence entirely whole cloth, which it had never heard before, and then use that sentence in the proper way and context. (For newer readers here, I've recounted this event many times. I used to take my friend's son to school. As we left I would always turn to the parrot and say "You be a good bird Murray" and out the door we went. On one occasion though, as we were ready to  exit the door, I turned, and was about to say that, but the parrot beat me to the punch, and said "I'll be a good bird." Both my friend's son and I stood there, stunned, looking at each other in disbelief.)  Like it or not, that is a sign of intelligence, and awareness of the situation.

Which brings me to the final observation: what really seems to be collapsing in all these stories and accumulated evidence, is not so much a view of intelligence, but a recent, mechanistic cosmology, with the universe, and especially animals, viewed as some sort of giant mechanism made of other mechanisms. In that world, in that cosmology, humanity was always an accident, an incomprehensible anomaly. But in the ancient world the metaphor of the universe was that of an organism, made of organisms, and all reflective to varying degrees of communication. Even in our man-made canyons of skyscrapers, we still seek the companionship of animals, and perhaps there are deep-seated, seminal reasons for that, perhaps in some fundamental way we are more human with, than without, them...

See you on the flip side...

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