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首页> 外文期刊>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America >Simple rules can explain discrimination of putative recursive syntactic structures by a songbird species
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Simple rules can explain discrimination of putative recursive syntactic structures by a songbird species

机译：简单的规则可以解释鸣禽物种对假定的递归句法结构的区分

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摘要

According to a controversial hypothesis, a characteristic unique to human language is recursion. Contradicting this hypothesis, it has been claimed that the starling, one of the two animal species tested for this ability to date, is able to distinguish acoustic stimuli based on the presence or absence of a center-embedded recursive structure. In our experiment we show that another songbird species, the zebra finch, can also discriminate between artificial song stimuli with these structures. Zebra finches are able to generalize this discrimination to new songs constructed using novel elements belonging to the same categories, similar to starlings. However, to demonstrate that this is based on the ability to detect the putative recursive structure, it is critical to test whether the birds can also distinguish songs with the same structure consisting of elements belonging to unfamiliar categories. We performed this test and show that seven out of eight zebra finches failed it. This suggests that the acquired discrimination was based on phonetic rather than syntactic generalization. The eighth bird, however, must have used more abstract, structural cues. Nevertheless, further probe testing showed that the results of this bird, as well as those of others, could be explained by simpler rules than recursive ones. Although our study casts doubts on whether the rules used by starlings and zebra finches really provide evidence for the ability to detect recursion as present in "context-free" syntax, it also provides evidence for abstract learning of vocal structure in a songbird.
机译：根据一个有争议的假设，人类语言的独特特征是递归。与该假设相反，据称the鸟是迄今为此能力进行测试的两种动物之一，能够根据是否存在中心嵌入的递归结构来区分声刺激。在我们的实验中，我们证明了另一种鸣禽物种（斑马雀科）也可以区分具有这些结构的人工歌曲刺激。斑马雀科能够将这种歧视概括为使用属于同一类别的新元素（类似于八哥）构造的新歌曲。但是，要证明这是基于检测推定递归结构的能力，至关重要的是测试鸟是否也可以区分具有不熟悉类别的元素组成的具有相同结构的歌曲。我们进行了该测试，结果表明八分之七的斑马雀科不及格。这表明获得的歧视是基于语音而非句法概括的。但是，第八只鸟肯定使用了更多抽象的结构线索。但是，进一步的探针测试表明，与递归规则相比，可以通过更简单的规则来解释此鸟以及其他鸟的结果。尽管我们的研究对star鸟和斑马雀科使用的规则是否真的提供了检测“无上下文”语法中存在的递归能力的证据表示怀疑，但它也为抽象学习鸣禽的声音结构提供了证据。

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    Caroline A. A. van Heijningen; Jos de Visser; Willem Zuidema; Carel ten Cate;

  • 作者单位

    Behavioral Biology, Institute of Biology Leiden, Leiden University, Sylvius Laboratory, Sylviusweg 72, P.O. Box 9505, 2300 RA, Leiden, The Netherlands Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Postzone C2-S, P.O. Box 9600, 2300 RC, Leiden, The Netherlands;

    Behavioral Biology, Institute of Biology Leiden, Leiden University, Sylvius Laboratory, Sylviusweg 72, P.O. Box 9505, 2300 RA, Leiden, The Netherlands;

    Behavioral Biology, Institute of Biology Leiden, Leiden University, Sylvius Laboratory, Sylviusweg 72, P.O. Box 9505, 2300 RA, Leiden, The Netherlands Institute for Logic, Language, and Computation, University of Amsterdam, P.O. Box 94242, 1090 GE, Amsterdam, The Netherlands;

    Behavioral Biology, Institute of Biology Leiden, Leiden University, Sylvius Laboratory, Sylviusweg 72, P.O. Box 9505, 2300 RA, Leiden, The Netherlands Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Postzone C2-S, P.O. Box 9600, 2300 RC, Leiden, The Netherlands;

  • 收录信息 美国《科学引文索引》(SCI);美国《生物学医学文摘》(MEDLINE);美国《化学文摘》(CA);
  • 原文格式 PDF
  • 正文语种 eng
  • 中图分类
  • 关键词

    biolinguistics; discrimination learning; rule learning; syntax;

    机译：生物语言学歧视学习;规则学习;句法;

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