Mega Post Thanksgiving

(The first part of this was supposed to be posted on Monday, but the server crashed and deleted half of it. Hence the extra long post.)

[commence tryptophan-less rant]

Over break, I came across two interesting language related articles, both of which dealt with birds.

The first was a short summary of research done by researchers at the University of Chicago and UCSD, where they taught European starlings “two syntactic patterns, one thought to be understood only by humans.” Presented with novel patterns, the birds could identify which ones followed which grammatical structures. The excerpt isn’t online, but the original research article can be found here. The researchers used two different sounds arranged in two different syntactic patterns: A^nB^n and (AB)^n, the latter presumed to be understood solely by humans. The paper ultimately concludes that the songbirds can, in fact, differentiate between the two patterns, but from reading the article, a great deal stands out. For example, the birds only began to differentiate after operant conditioning had taken place, and that too after 10,000-50,000 trials. The article points out that tamarin monkeys, given a similar task, failed to recognize differences between the two patterns, but given how essential patterning is for songbirds, the result doesn’t seem terribly surprising. Moreover, this only points the ability to identify recursive grammar, not actually use it. It’s akin to me being able to identify an airplane, though I have no idea how to actually fly one. If research showing animals actually using recursive grammar surfaces, then there would be something interesting to talk about, but at present, this article doesn’t offer much.

The second article I happened upon over Thanksgiving break was much more seasonal. It was in The New Yorker, so I can’t find it online, but it was about a man who claims he can talk to turkeys. Whereas experts claim turkeys have 13 basic sounds, Joe Hutto of Florida says he’s mastered 50 distinct sounds. Over years of rearing toms and hens from eggs, he’s honed the ability to talk, console, and instruct turkeys, as well as listening and learning from them. Of course, there’s no empirical evidence for this but it brings up the possibility of animals having some basic communications system. So while birds of a feather fly together, Hutto may not be so cuckoo after all.

[end tryptophan-less rant]

More recently, I read an artice on how boys and girls process language differently (once again gender difference is brought up). The article describes this study, where it was shown that girls over-generalized more often than boys. Over-generalization, in this case, means (for example) saying holded for held. The research examined such patterns among children of various ages and found that the over-generalization rate was three times higher among girls than in boys. This ran contrary to the hypothesis, since females generally outperform males on verbal skills. The proposed explanation is that girls created past tense conjugations based on similar-sounding words (e.g. folded and molded), whereas boys derived such formations based on grammatical rules and exceptions. While this explanation may suffice, it does not explain why these differences should exist in the first place. The study itself is interesting (albeit abstruse) and opens the door to other interesting research. Another note about this article is that it focused on a specific, measureable aspect of language, as opposed to vague generalizations, in discussing gender differences. It’d be nice to have more similarly-designed studies.