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The ‘chick-a-dee’ calls of Parus atricapillus: A recombinant system of animal communication compared with written English

The ‘chick-a-dee’ calls of Parus atricapillus: A recombinant system of animal communication... JACK P. MAILMAN, MILLICENT S. PICKEN and ROBERT W. FICKEN We describe here what we believe to be one of the most interesting systems of animal communication yet discovered. The 'chick-a-dee' calls of the black-capped chickadee (Parus atricapillus) combine four distinct notetypes in a variety of ways to make a large diversity of distinct call-types. In elementary properties this system thus resembles human language in which letters are recombined to make written words, or spoken phonemes are recombined to make spoken morphemes. In this first report we describe the chickadee system and explore some of its similarities to and differences from written English. Susan T. Smith (1972) was the first to point out explicitly the recombinant nature of 'chick-a-dee' calls in her pioneering study of the related Carolina chickadee (Parus carolinensis). She identified three note-types, one of which appears to be differentiated into two separate note-types in the black-capped chickadee. She recorded 'chick-a-dee' calls in a wide variety of behavioral contexts and concluded that calls encode information about the caller's locomotory behavior and movements in space. Combined with the context in which they occur, the calls can therefore be used in coordinating movements of winter flocks, mobbing behavior http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Semiotica - Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies / Revue de l'Association Internationale de Sémiotique de Gruyter

The ‘chick-a-dee’ calls of Parus atricapillus: A recombinant system of animal communication compared with written English

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Publisher
de Gruyter
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Walter de Gruyter
ISSN
0037-1998
eISSN
1613-3692
DOI
10.1515/semi.1985.56.3-4.191
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

JACK P. MAILMAN, MILLICENT S. PICKEN and ROBERT W. FICKEN We describe here what we believe to be one of the most interesting systems of animal communication yet discovered. The 'chick-a-dee' calls of the black-capped chickadee (Parus atricapillus) combine four distinct notetypes in a variety of ways to make a large diversity of distinct call-types. In elementary properties this system thus resembles human language in which letters are recombined to make written words, or spoken phonemes are recombined to make spoken morphemes. In this first report we describe the chickadee system and explore some of its similarities to and differences from written English. Susan T. Smith (1972) was the first to point out explicitly the recombinant nature of 'chick-a-dee' calls in her pioneering study of the related Carolina chickadee (Parus carolinensis). She identified three note-types, one of which appears to be differentiated into two separate note-types in the black-capped chickadee. She recorded 'chick-a-dee' calls in a wide variety of behavioral contexts and concluded that calls encode information about the caller's locomotory behavior and movements in space. Combined with the context in which they occur, the calls can therefore be used in coordinating movements of winter flocks, mobbing behavior

Journal

Semiotica - Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies / Revue de l'Association Internationale de Sémiotique – de Gruyter

Published: Jan 1, 1985

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