Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird calls (2016)

Re:Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird ca... by ineedasername on Saturday October 17, 2020 @06:44PM (#24814040)

This is the case even though English isn't even considered a tonal language. Mandarin is a highly tonal language with four distinct formalized tones. Not only that, but the brain has to adapt to pick out those tones clearly. As a result, "perfect pitch" is much more common for Mandarin speakers than speakers of non-tonal languages.

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Re:Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird ca... by gibolt on Saturday October 17, 2020 @07:01PM (#24814123)

Tonal here is very different. The tone in Chinese is a completely different word. Multiple words have the same tone and thus pronunciation with different meaning (and character). Tone usage on one word would not change the interpretation.

There are cases where this is kind of like English, in the case of buy/sell 买/卖, but still quite different

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Re:Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird ca... by ineedasername on Sunday October 18, 2020 @10:04AM (#24817962)

Yes, that's why I referred to Mandarin as a "tonal language". It is a formal linguistic categorization. Speakers of all languages may use tone, but an actual tonal language is quite different, taking the concept of tone to a another level in terms of grammatic and lexical importance.

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