Misa/ Zebra finches are sensitive to emotional cues in human speech.

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Zebra finches are sensitive to emotionalcues in human speech.

By Kilayla Pilon, May 29, 2014

A study in Proceedings of the Royal Society B has shown that zebra finches can defect the features of emotional human language. We humans are able to detect prosody in speech; in linguistics, prosody is rhythm, amplified sounds, and intonation of speech, and used for conveying emotion to others relying not only on the meaning of words but also on the way to vocalize. With prosody, we can emphasize the emotion, involving the presence of irony or sarcasm. (Wikipedia, prosody) Other animals, like song birds, not only can use prosody in their voice by amplifying the voice or changing the speed but can also detect these subtle changes in human speech, which had been unclear among the linguists.

 

In this study, the researchers trained eight zebra finches to respond particular patterns of prosodic cues by listening to recordings of spoken syllables, which have simple syllables and changed pitch, volume and time duration to make a series of four syllables with prosodic syllable at the starting point or the ending point. They were trained to peck at a sensor when they heard prosodic words at the starting point, but not to do so when they did not. By using differently emphasized recordings, they were tested again. They changed the emphasis which was at the starting point into the one at the ending, so that they could ensure the experiment’s accuracy. As a result, the finches still could detect the prosodic cues. In the other test, they tested stimuli humans, instead of the prosodic features, responded to the syntactic elements, resulting in that zebra finches respond more keenly than people do.

Zebra finches are sensitive in similar lines in birds and humans; an ancestral rote or evolved may be the same between birds and humans.

 

This study could prove that we developed distinct words from prosodies; human language has been produced by a prosodic protolanguage. It might have come from the sensitivity of our ancestors’ non-speech sounds, like a sound of sneeze, of cough, baby’s utterance.

 

This article is quite interesting in that not only human but also zebra finches are skilled at distinguishing emphasized emotional prosody. Birds, including zebra finches, acquire languages and how to vocalize in the same way as humans do. Also, they have critical period to acquire how to sing; for example, if they do not listen to other birds singing by the time, they would not be able to acquire how to sing almost forever. The same in humans. If this study develops more, we can solve one of the human language mysteries. As the researchers say, prosodic protolanguage might have the origin in the sensitivity to prosodic sounds in non-speech sounds. If so, Chomsky’s idea, “human language has developed by leaps and bounds” is slightly different from the reality, and we can study our languages from other animals but humans by applying their ability to humans down the line, which will apply for learning new languages.