The whale pattern follows the universal laws of human language, new research finds

All known human languages ​​show surprising patterns. The most frequent words in a language are the second most frequent, the third three times more frequent. This is known as the ZIPF Law.

Researchers were looking for evidence of this pattern in communication between other species, but up until now, no other examples were found.

In a new study published in Science, a team of experts in whale songs, linguistics and developmental psychology analyzed eight years of song recordings from a humpback whale in New Caledonia. Leading by Inval Arnon at Hebrew University, Ellen Garland at St Andrews University and Simon Kirby at Edinburgh University, he uses techniques inspired by how human toddlers learn the language to analyze humpback whale songs. did.

We have discovered that the same Zipfian pattern, which is universally found in human language, also occurs in whale songs. This complex signaling system is culturally learned by each individual from others, like human language.

Learn like a toddler

When toddlers are learning, they must somehow discover where the words begin and end. The speech is continuous and there are no gaps between words that can be used. So how do they invade language?

Thirty years of research have revealed that this is done by hearing amazing sounds in the context. The sounds in words are relatively predictable, but relatively unpredictable between words. The same procedure was used to analyze the whale song data.

Unexpectedly, we used this technique to reveal the same statistical properties found in whale songs in all languages. It turns out that both human language and whale songs have statistically consistent parts.

In other words, both of them contain repeating parts where transitions between elements are more predictable within the part. Furthermore, these repeated subsequences we detected follow the Zipfian frequency distribution seen in all human languages ​​that are not previously seen in other species.

Whale Song Recording (2017) Operation Set, 916 kb (download)

How do the same statistical properties occur in two evolutionarily distant species that differ from each other in so many ways? Humans and whales share learning mechanisms, cultures, so we recommend discovering these similarities.

Cultural origins

Our findings raise an exciting question: why do these different systems of incredibly distant species have a common structure? The reason behind this is because both are culturally learned.

Cultural evolution inevitably leads to the emergence of properties that facilitate learning. If the system is difficult to learn, the next generation of learners will not survive.

There is growing evidence from human experiments that it has statistically consistent parts and that they follow a Zipfian distribution to make learning easier. This suggests that learning and transmission play an important role in how these properties emerged in both human language and whale songs.

So, can we talk to whales now?

Finding parallel structures between whale songs and human languages ​​can also lead to another question. Can I talk to a whale now? The short answer is no, but it’s not at all.

Our study does not examine the meaning behind the sequence of whale songs. If they mean anything, we don’t know what these segments mean to whales.

Music also includes similar structures, which may help you think of it as instrumental music. Melodies learn, repeat and spread, but they don’t give meaning to musical notes the same way that individual words mean.

Next: Bird’s Singing

Our work also makes bold predictions. If complex communication is culturally transmitted, this Zipfian distribution should be found. Humans and whales are not the only species that do this.

Find out what is known as “vocal production learning” in the unusual species species throughout the animal kingdom. Singing birds in particular may provide a great place to culturally learn their songs.

Similarly, we hope that learning will not allow these statistical properties to be found in species communications that do not transmit complex communications. This helps to clarify whether cultural evolution is a general driving force for these traits between humans and whales.

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