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For decades, researchers have studied the language and linguistic patterns of orangutans to find answers to questions regarding human speech development. Due to their complex sound arrangement, as well as their use of consonants and vowels, orangutans can be our closest relatives in terms of language.
Researchers use orangutans to study the development of our own language because they were the first species to transcend the “great apes lineage.” Orangutans are also the only ape-like species to communicate with consonants and vowels, and have one of the most complex and developed language systems in the animal kingdom.
In a study from the United Kingdom, researchers found new information about how orangutans communicate. This information changes what we know, what we have already accepted about the development of human speech, and calls into question the modern mathematical formulas we use to learn our language.
The study
In their study, the researchers asked what would happen to the meaning of orangutan language as it travels across a large area. For example, when people shout across the field at their friend. In human language, space confuses the meaning of our language. We may recognize the voices of our friends, but not understand what they are saying.
The researchers reproduced the recorded sounds of the orangutan in the rainforest at 25, 50, 75 and 100 meters. They found that although the distance continued to increase, the quality of the message remained the same. They continued to check the sound and found that the message remained clear until the sounds were rearranged.
For this test, the researchers used recorded orangutan sounds from previous studies in Indonesia. They chose sounds that had clear consonants and vowels in the language. The aim of the study was to consider only sounds as a “packet of information”. They hoped to eliminate other language identifiers such as facial expressions, gestures and other body language by transmitting sounds over a distance.
They expected these sounds to act like a human language – the meaning will get more confusing as the distance increases. They did not expect the meaning to remain clear as the distance increased.
Despite previous research showing that language must become confusing at a distance, this study shows that we still have a lot to learn about linguistic evolution.
Results and impact
The clarity of the orangutan’s calls casts doubt on the mathematical formulas that researchers have used for 20 years to study the linguistic development of humans. This formula assumes that a language has a limit on how far it can travel before it loses its meaning. The original study by Harvard scientists suggested that ancient people linked sounds together to move the tongue over a distance.
Learning that the cries of the orangutan do not lose their meaning at great distances, but simply distort the sound, linguists and evolutionary psychologists wonder how, in their opinion, human communication developed. Although mathematical formulas assume a linear language process, this study shows that we are just beginning to understand our language roots.
In the future, researchers hope to begin deciphering the meaning of the orangutan’s calls. We hope that studying the structural elements of the linguistic development of this species will shed more light on our own linguistic evolution. Evolutionary psychologists and linguists hope this research will lead to more research that applies mathematical models to real data.
As we continue to study the orangutan calls, their meaning and evolution, we hope to find a clue to our own linguistic history.
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