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'Uniquely human' component of language found in gregarious birds

to properly express yourself ?how to structure your phrases and sentences.

Language experts have used properties of these rules, whose complexity is described by the Chomsky hierarchy, "to define the boundaries between humans and other creatures," said Margoliash. "Now we find that we have been joined on this side of that boundary by the starling. It should no longer be considered an insult to be called a bird brain."

Although they are not known for the lilting beauty of their songs, starlings produce an amazing array of complex sounds, combining chirps, warbles, trills and whistles with rattling sounds.

They also have a talent for mimicry. One starling famously copied an unpublished tune that Mozart whistled in a pet store; the composer purchased the bird and kept it as a pet. The starling is mentioned only once in all of Shakespeare, but in that passage an angry warrior, forbidden by the King to speak of a rival, Mortimer, decides he will "have a starling shall be taught to speak nothing but 'Mortimer,' and give it him to keep his anger still in motion." (Because of this passage, 100 European starlings were first introduced to New York City's Central Park in the 1890s. They flourished. North America now has an estimated 200 million starlings.)

One previous study, however, suggested that even non-human primates are incapable of recognizing anything beyond the simplest syntax. A paper published in Science in 2004 by scientists at Harvard and MIT found that cotton-top tamarin monkeys were not able to master higher-level grammar patterns. "The acquisition of hierarchical processing ability," the authors of that paper conclude, "may have represented a critical juncture in the evolution of the human language faculty." They also noted that vocal learners, such as songbirds, might have produced different results.

"When I saw that study I was not convinced of the significance of the failure of the monkeys," said Howard Nus
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Source:University of Chicago Medical Center


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