Can a bird brain do phonology?
نویسنده
چکیده
A number of recent studies have revealed correspondences between song- and language-related neural structures, pathways, and gene expression in humans and songbirds. Analyses of vocal learning, song structure, and the distribution of song elements have similarly revealed a remarkable number of shared characteristics with human speech. This article reviews recent developments in the understanding of these issues with reference to the phonological phenomena observed in human language. This investigation suggests that birds possess a host of abilities necessary for human phonological computation, as evidenced by behavioral, neuroanatomical, and molecular genetic studies. Vocal-learning birds therefore present an excellent model for studying some areas of human phonology, though differences in the primitives of song and language as well as the absence of a human-like morphosyntax make human phonology differ from birdsong phonology in crucial ways.
منابع مشابه
Finite-State Phonology In HPSG
Attention on constraint-based grammar formalisms such as Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) has focussed on syntax and semantics to the exclusion of phonology. This paper investigates the incorporation of a non-procedural theory of phonology into HPSG, based on the ‘one-level’ model of Bird & Ellison (1992). The standard rule-representation distinction is replaced by the description-ob...
متن کاملOne-Level Phonology: Autosegmental Representations and Rules as Finite Automata
When phonological rules are regarded as declarative descriptions, it is possible to construct a model of phonology in which rules and representations are no longer distinguished and such procedural devices as rule-ordering are absent. In this paper we present a finite-state model of phonology in which automata are the descriptions and tapes (or strings) are the objects being described. This pro...
متن کاملCommentary on Bird and Klein
As Bird and Klein rightly observe, phonological thinking has lagged behind that in syntax and semantics: the metaphor of underlying representations being transformed via an ordered set of rules, long abandoned in syntax, is deeply ingrained in phonology. The cleanest break with this tradition is represented by declarative phonology, of which the current paper is an instance; indeed, the adoptio...
متن کامل