墨尔本PTE素材库——This Primate’s Calls Obey a Linguistic Law

墨尔本PTE素材库——This Primate’s Calls Obey a Linguistic Law

中文批注

这段音频的主要内容，是关于语言交流。关于一种语言表达的“规律规则”，叫做Menzerath‘s law。音频的开头，借由Twitter的例子来解释了menzerath’s law的定义。后半段，提及了一些学者关于这一个规律的研究。就连狒狒之间的语言，也遵循着menzerath’s law这一规律。那么听完了整段音频后，大家可以试着来回答以下问题：

What is Menzerath’s law?

How to define Menzerath’s law?

这段音频如果拿来做dictation的练习，其实并不算特别简单。里面会有一些较难听写的词汇，比较适合程度较好，PTE目标分数也较高的学生。如果大家发现听完这段音频，还有不少不能理解的地方，或者没有听懂的地方，就一定要查看后文的Full Transcript哦！

【key Vocabulary】

Primate: 首领，灵长类动物

Linguistic: 语言的，语言学的

Artificially:  人工地，人为地，不自然地

Constrain: 驱使，强迫，束缚

Compression: 压缩，浓缩，压榨，压迫

Psychologist: 心理学家

Gelada: 狒狒

Baboon: 狒狒

Sequence: 序列，顺序

Strung:  string的过去式和过去分词，捆扎，系上

Constituent: 成分，组成部分，选民，委托人

Mystery: 秘密，神秘的事物

Underpin: 巩固，支持，加强基础

Full Transcript

The vocalizations of the gelada, a baboon relative, appear to follow a linguistic rule called Menzerath’s law. Christopher Intagliata reports.

Communication on Twitter is artificially constrained: 140 characters per tweet, max. So it turns out the more words in a tweet, the shorter each word tends to be—at least according to one analysis. Sorta makes sense on Twitter: there’s a limited amount of space to play with. But the weird thing is, that pattern—longer phrase, shorter words—also holds true in our everyday language too. It’s called Menzerath’s law.

“And it’s this idea of essentially compression in information.” Morgan Gustison, a psychologist at the University of Michigan. “So Menzerath’s Law, the way you define it is, the larger the whole, the smaller the parts.”

Gustison and her colleagues tested out that rule of human language on the calls of geladas—relatives of baboons. <<call sample>> They analyzed more than a thousand of those call sequences—which are strung together from six distinct call types. And they found that, just as the law would predict in human communication, the longer the gelada sequence, the shorter the constituent calls. <<sample1>> And the shorter the string? The longer the calls. <<sample2>> The study is in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [Morgan L. Gustison et al, Gelada vocal sequences follow Menzerath’s linguistic law]

Gustison says the meaning of the calls is still a bit of a mystery. But the fact that they obey the rule could suggest something important is going on. “The interesting thing about it is it suggests there are universal principles that can underpin complex vocal systems. And so the more you say, you find a more efficient way of saying it. So that’s what we think is going on with the geladas, is that they have so much to say, so they’re finding these strategies to make what they’re saying more efficient.” Might not be a bad thing to consider…the next time you have a lot of say.

(source: http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/this-primate-s-calls-obey-a-linguistic-law/)