Human Language & Bird Song

[s.t. bischoff]

Hello all,

Not sure if anyone has read the original paper...but thought folks might
find this of interest...

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/how-human-language-could-have-evolved-from-birdsong-0221.html

How human language could have evolved from birdsong
Linguistics and biology researchers propose a new theory on the deep roots
of human speech.

The sounds uttered by birds offer in several respects the nearest analogy
to language,” Charles Darwin wrote in “The Descent of Man” (1871), while
contemplating how humans learned to speak. Language, he speculated, might
have had its origins in singing, which “might have given rise to words
expressive of various complex emotions.”

Now researchers from MIT, along with a scholar from the University of
Tokyo, say that Darwin was on the right path. The balance of evidence, they
believe, suggests that human language is a grafting of two communication
forms found elsewhere in the animal kingdom: first, the elaborate songs of
birds, and second, the more utilitarian, information-bearing types of
expression seen in a diversity of other animals...