Rhythmic analyses of orangutan long calls reveal the presence of self-embedded isochrony in the vocal combinatorics of a wild great ape. Notably, we found that wild orangutan long calls exhibit two discernible structural strata – the full- and sub-pulse level – and three non-exclusive nested motifs in the form of [isochronyA [isochronya,b,c]](Figure 2).
https://elifesciences.org/articles/88348
Instead, we demonstrate how a vocal element repeated at a constant interval is itself composed by (one of three possible) vocal elements that also repeat themselves at a constant interval of different tempi.
So basically it's a meter broken into quarter notes, half notes and sixteenth notes. But the meter stays the same time length.
The discovery of recursive vocal patterns organized along two hierarchical temporal levels in a hominid besides humans suggests that ‘sequences within sequences’ may have been present in ancestral hominids, and hence, that second-order sequences may have predated the emergence of language in the human lineage.
The open discussion of what properties make a structure proto-recursive will be essential to move the state of knowledge past antithetical, dichotomous notions of how recursion and syntax evolved (Berwick and Chomsky, 2019; Martins and Boeckx, 2019).
Third, given that isochrony universally governs music and that recursion is a feature of music, findings could suggest a possible evolutionary link between great ape loud calls and vocal music. Loud calling is an archetypal trait in primates (Wich and Nunn, 2002) and among ancient hominids it could have preceded, and subsequently transmuted, into modern recursive vocal structures in humans, as found today in the form of song and chants.
recursive vocal combinatorics were first and foremost a feature of proto-musical expression in human ancestors, later recruited and ‘re-engineered’ for the generation of linguistic combinatorics.
No comments:
Post a Comment