NRSC 4132 Blog

Syntax and grammar, the fundamental rules of any language can make many school aged children emit a resounding "Ugh!" These are strict rules that we have developed over time to help keep our evolving languages in check: they tell us what order to put words in and what words are to go together. It is even possible to use the rules our own language to decipher other languages. We do this by first assessing the grammar, because humans have the ability to determine grammar despite a lack of context. This would have been essential for anyone attempting to learn a new language for the first time: recognize the patterns and go from there. For instance: in English, the verb tends to be in second position within a sentence but it can be almost anywhere; in German the verb is only in the first, second and last position within a sentence. This too can be used to study dead languages such as Mayan, which has been found to place the verb first in the sentence.
The ability to discern these patterns resides in Broca's area, or the left inferior frontal gyrus within the human brain. Studies on the analogous structures in nonhuman primates have only shown an ability to process simple sequences, failing at understanding complex language structures. It has since been thought that the comprehension of intricate communication was reserved for our own species.
One study, "Songbirds possess the spontaneous ability to discriminate syntactic rules," by Kentaro Abe and Dai Watanabe debunk this previous assumption. To show that songbirds can indeed asses the 'correctness' of a song, a mixture of both store bought Bengalese finches and those that were raised in an aviary were placed in a room with a speaker. This speaker was to play songs that the bird had been habituated to (such as those it would have learned from others of its species as it matured), along with new songs and the original with modifications to the sequence of notes. The determination of whether these sequences were discriminated against was the amount of vocalizations, with a higher number indicating a discrepancy in syntax. In both male and female finches, there was a significant increase of bird calls when specific sequences were changed against the rules of their syntax, while others did not elicit a response. This suggests that not only are certain songbirds able to listen to auditory information and glean syntactic rules but are also able to use this information when examining novel auditory information.
The faculties needed to decipher syntax seems to be a learned response, however. In birds that had been isolated from the general populous excepting for their nest mates, their ability to discriminate non-syntactically correct sequences was significantly lowered compared to controls. This was enhanced as they approached maturity, but did not improve any further while still in isolation. When these isolated birds were then moved to an aviary, they learned to distinguish correct and incorrect syntax as determined by their peers within two weeks, a blink of an eye compared to the amount of time that humans spend on learning our own syntax.
This ability shown by finches and other song birds is a complex system of communication and just may show that humans are not alone in their capacity to communicate.

Original article found at: www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v14/n8/full/nn.2869.html
-edited for punctuation-