Hawk /siiiii/ !

[ECOLING at aol.com]

Thanks to Larry Trask for this absolutely delightful
example of how a common expression
(even across mammal and bird species!)
can have a motivated cause, a quite unexpected one.
Quoted below.
I hope all linguistics students get educated about such examples.

Whenever we find some highly ubiquitous term,
a wide consistency of sound-meaning link,
we should be alert to the possibility of such a motivated cause,
and just because we haven't found one yet,
we should not assume there isn't one.

However, Trask goes on to say:

>To put it another way, comparative linguistics is obliged to work with
>linguistic items which are arbitrary in form -- items, that is,
>whose form is in no way motivated by their meaning.
>Trying to work with motivated
>(non-arbitrary) items is a guarantee of spurious conclusions.

There is no simple dichotomy between linguistic items which are
arbitrary in form, and those which are in no way motivated by their
meaning.  Linguistic items can be *mostly* arbitrary in form,
in the sense that there is only a very weak and partial motivation
for their form, which we usually see reflected
by a less-than-ubiquitous distribution, and
by a less-than-overwhelming similarity of form.
There are intermediates.

And since a *limited* but widespread distribution of a form
can arise through any of three mechanisms at least:
(a) motivated by the real world, arising independently
(b) inherited from a common ancestor language
(c) inherited in some languages, borrowed into others

we cannot logically assume merely from a widespread distribution
across what we *currently* take to be independent families
of languages that the reason for this distribution is (a) rather than (b,c).

For *kukurru*, *miaou*, *mu*, *me*, the case is a rather easy one.
For many other bird names equally so (though it is not to be sneezed
at that some bird names were the same in Sumerian as in the present
day, there can also be historical influences at work simultaneously).

For the warning cry /siiiii/ for avian predators,
the case is not an immediately obvious one,
and it presumably took considerable work to establish
that there was a cause of type (a),
which as I noted does not exclude that there might
be also a cause of type (c) operating, if animals can learn at all,
which we certainly know they can.

So there is reason to leave conclusions open
when we really do not have sufficient evidence to give
a conclusive answer.

Withholding judgement is in fact the *conservative* position
when we do not have sufficient evidence.
(Just as a well-known error of logic is to assume that
lack of evidence is evidence of lack of phenomenon.)

Sincerely,
Lloyd Anderson

>Now, it has been observed that a diverse array of species --
>birds and small mammals -- all use acoustically very similar
>danger calls for warning of hawks and similar flying predators:
>a kind of high-pitched [siiiii] noise.
>Since such calls are found in a range of birds and mammals,
>the descent view [...] would require us to derive all these calls
>from a single ancestral hawk-warning call in Proto-Mammal-Bird,
>over 300 million years ago.  Right?

Could it also have been originated by one group of animals,
and learned by some of the others?  That is, be a loan-"word"?

>But there's a much better explanation.
>Hawks have acute hearing, and they are
>very good at locating the source of a sound accurately.
>This fact would appear to make the production of *any* danger call
>a very dangerous enterprise for the individual producing it,
>and hence an evolutionary disaster for his species.

>*But*.  It turns out that the hawk's usually reliable sound-location
>mechanism breaks down with high-pitched noises resembling [siiiii]:
>it can't locate the source.

>So, we have a simple explanation for the widespread form-meaning
>pairing that we observe in diverse species:
>independent motivated creation.
>Individuals that produce such calls are not spotted,
>and they survive and pass on their genes.
>Individuals that produce other calls get spotted and eaten.

>So, since there exists a simple explanation for the widespread form-meaning
>pairing in terms of motivation, its "ubiquity" is already accounted for,
>and there is no reason to appeal to common origin.