Abstract
Language has a complex and hierarchical structure, which includes context-free grammar and phrase embedding. However, there have been no reports of a phrase-embedding structure in animal vocal communication, although there are several reports of combinational animal sounds that reference different objects and emotions. The songs of male Mueller’s gibbons in our study area consist of two notes, “wa” and “oo,” and combinations of these are flexible. There are various types of note orders in their song phrases. When the animals sing songs by combining acoustic elements flexibly, a complicated syntax may emerge. When phrase “N” is inserted within another phrase “AB,” the generated phrase is shown as “ANB.” We named this structure a phrase-inserting structure. If the phrase “N” itself has an inserting structure elsewhere, “ANB” is shown as “AABB.” This structure is considered a phrase-embedding structure, as defined by Abe and Watanabe (Nat Neurosci 14:1067–1074, 2011). We hypothesized that there is a phrase-inserting structure in male Mueller’s gibbons’ songs. We analyzed 70 songs by a single male and found note orders that suggested a phrase-inserting structure. Among them, there were four examples of phrases with structure within phrases, suggesting phrase embedding. Phrase inserting might be considered a sort of precursory level to recursion. Although our sample size was small, our results show that male Mueller’s gibbons may be able to produce recursive sequences. This provides an important insight into the study of language evolution.
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08 June 2020
In the original version of this article, the Supplementary materials i.e., ESM 1, ESM 2 and ESM 6 should have been part of the article and presented in the Appendix section.
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Acknowledgments
We thank the Economic Planning Unit of the Malaysia Federal Government, the Economic Planning Unit of the Sabah State Government, Danum Valley Management Committee, and Sabah Biodiversity Centre for permission to conduct this study in Sabah. We also thank Donny Sah Itin, Isnadil Mohd, and Dennysius Aloysius, the nature guides at the BRL, for assistance with data collection and gibbon tracking. We are grateful to Etsuko Inoue for her dedicated help and advice with our research.
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This research was partly supported by the Heisei Foundation for basic science.
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The original version of this article was revised: The Supplementary materials i.e., ESM 1, ESM 2 and ESM 6 are now part of the article as Appendix.
Appendix
Appendix
Portion of the sonograms produced by 6 males around BRL. A: SAPA male, B: neighbor male located on the west side of the SAPA group, C: neighbor male located on the east side of the SAPA group, D: neighbor male located on the north side of the SAPA group, E: neighbor male located on the south side of the SAPA group. F: new group entered in the SAPA group territory after the SAPA group disappeared. In all songs, notes of “oo-wa” and “quaver-type notes” were not found. In D male song, the first and third phrases seem to have a phrase-inserting structure (solid line brackets show the inserted phrases)
Examples of phrase A-N-B in Type II phrases
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Inoue, Y., Sinun, W., Yosida, S. et al. Note orders suggest phrase-inserting structure in male Mueller’s gibbon songs: a case study. acta ethol 23, 89–102 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10211-020-00341-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10211-020-00341-y