Meaningful call combinations and compositional processing in the southern pied babbler.

ABSTRACT: Language's expressive power is largely attributable to its compositionality: meaningful words are combined into larger/higher-order structures with derived meaning. Despite its importance, little is known regarding the evolutionary origins and emergence of this syntactic ability. Although previous research has shown a rudimentary capability to combine meaningful calls in primates, because of a scarcity of comparative data, it is unclear to what extent analog forms might also exist outside of primates. Here, we address this ambiguity and provide evidence for rudimentary compositionality in the discrete vocal system of a social passerine, the pied babbler (Turdoides bicolor). Natural observations and predator presentations revealed that babblers produce acoustically distinct alert calls in r

SUBMITTER: Engesser S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4889383 | biostudies-literature | 2016 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature