Младенческие и птичьи вокализации: некоторые аналогии

Abstract

The article undertakes comparative examination of melodicism in vocalizations (vocal signals) of infants and birds. It is established that these spheres are characterized by a common selection of such melodic units as outcries, ascent and descent of register, waves, zigzags, pendulums, leaps and repetitions. The indicated units hearken back to eight typical models – melodemes, discover similarity with each other in their semantical content and in an analogous way function within the system of communication. Familiarization with the literature on the subject demonstrates that separate moments of similitude of the aforementioned spheres have already been marked out by researchers (primarily those outside of Russia), however the angle chosen in this work has not been examined before. The demonstrated relationship has been interpreted by scholars in some instances as derivation of the organization of human speech from bird acoustical signalization, and in other cases – as the action of common genetic mechanisms of sound-generation among humans and the feathered race. The melodic formulas analogous to the structures presented in infants’ and birds’ vocal signals, have been observed in the folk music of various peoples and even in contemporary music composition. Apparently, here we have to do with universals regulating the organization of the melodic principle in many acoustic spheres (moreover, not connected to each other directly) and referring to the most complex issue of evolutionary parallelisms in the formation and development of intonating. Keywords: vocalizations of children and birds, melodemes, human speech and bird singing, melodic universals.