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Abstract
Songbirds have become impressive neurobiological models for aspects of human verbal communication because they learn to sequence their song elements, analogous, in some ways, to how humans learn to produce spoken sequences with syntactic structure. However, mammals such as non-human primates are considered to be at best limited-vocal learners and not able to sequence their vocalizations, although some of these animals can learn certain ‘artificial grammar’ sequences. Thus, conceptual issues have slowed the progress in exploring potential neurobiological homologues to language-related processes in species that are taxonomically closely related to humans. We consider some of the conceptual issues impeding a pursuit of, as we define them, ‘proto-syntactic’ capabilities and their neuronal substrates in non-human animals. We also discuss ways to better bridge comparative behavioural and neurobiological data between humans and other animals. Finally, we propose guiding neurobiological hypotheses with which we aim to facilitate the future testing of the level of correspondence between the human brain network for syntactic-learning and related neurobiological networks present in other primates. Insights from the study of non-human primates and other mammals are likely to complement those being obtained in birds to further our knowledge of the human language-related network at the cellular level.
Highlights
If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.Frank A
We focus on the conceptual and technical challenges that are faced in pursuing evolutionarily homologues to human syntactic-learning in mammals such as non-human primates
At least conceptually, the approach with non-human primates and possibly the one that might be taken with other so-called ‘vocal non-learning’ animals must differ from the approaches that are being taken with vocal learning animals, such as songbirds
Summary
If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere. The path towards understanding the behavioural abilities and neuronal substrates that are evolutionarily related to those that humans use for language has been as challenging as it has been informative. Context-free pattern learning may someday be demonstrated in certain animals [4], yet, even if it is not, it remains important to understand how human capabilities with CFGs and beyond may have evolved from abilities lower in the FLH that are present in other living animals This requires better resolution of the lower parts of the hierarchy (figure 1) and consideration of the distinction between learning—as a behavioural measure of reception—and production. Some songbirds, such as Bengalese finches, nightingales and chaffinches, and humpback whales have songs that show sequencing elaborations such as forward or backward branching relationships and elaborations such as repeating elements within a range of acceptable repetitions While it is not always clear which of these would be hierarchically higher than the others in terms of syntactic complexity ( defined), these sorts of transitions deviate from strictly linear processes [37], these cases still only require first-order Markov processes to model them (figure 1c).
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