ArticleScientific reports2021
Universal principles underlying segmental structures in parrot song and human speech.
Article in Scientific reports, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 19 citations in OpenAlex.
- Rhythm Across Species: Situating Human Speech in a Comparative Framework.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Article
- Female Budgerigars Attend Equally to Rhythmic Beat or Repetition, While Humans Prioritize Their Combination.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Article
- Novel Approach to Inter-Onset-Interval Ratio Uncovers Music-Like Rhythmic Patterns in Budgerigar (Melopsittacus undulatus) Warble Song.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Article
- Name use by companion parrots.PloS one · 2026Article
- Challenges and new opportunities in deciphering the meaning of corvid call sequences.Animal cognition · 2025Review
- Article
- Beat-based dancing to music has evolutionary foundations in advanced vocal learning.BMC neuroscience · 2024Review
- How (and why) languages became more complex as we evolved more prosocial: the human self-domestication view.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Sensitivity to the sonority sequencing principle in rats (Rattus norvegicus).Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Lessons learned in animal acoustic cognition through comparisons with humans.Animal cognition · 2023Review
- Detecting surface changes in a familiar tune: exploring pitch, tempo and timbre.Animal cognition · 2022Article
- Voice modulatory cues to structure across languages and species.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Review
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Despite the diversity of human languages, certain linguistic patterns are remarkably consistent across human populations. While syntactic universals receive more attention, there is stronger evidence for universal patterns in the inventory and organization of segments: units that are separated by rapid acoustic transitions which are used to build syllables, words, and phrases. Crucially, if an alien researcher investigated spoken human language how we analyze non-human communication systems, many of the phonological regularities would be overlooked, as the majority of analyses in non-humans treat breath groups, or "syllables" (units divided by silent inhalations), as the smallest unit. Here, we introduce a novel segment-based analysis that reveals patterns in the acoustic output of budgerigars, a vocal learning parrot species, that match universal phonological patterns well-documented in humans. We show that song in four independent budgerigar populations is comprised of consonant- and vowel-like segments. Furthermore, the organization of segments within syllables is not random. As in spoken human language, segments at the start of a vocalization are more likely to be consonant-like and segments at the end are more likely to be longer, quieter, and lower in fundamental frequency. These results provide a new foundation for empirical investigation of language-like abilities in other species.
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