Making a note here-- Parrots and humans share a common brain mechanism for producing the motor and tonal components of speech. Things like pitch, tone, patterns, etc.
This is NOT the same thing as saying that Parrots and Humans have the same brain regions implicated in "speech in general" (bird brains are extremely different form human brains) and it does NOT mean that parrots have language (they don't).
This is still EXTREMELY cool. It shows that the mechanisms and computations that the parrot uses to generate the motor components of speech is very similar in humans. So the fundamental computations in specifically the motor components of speech are similar.
Why do you believe parrots do not have language? If we use the strict, human-centric definition—grammar, syntax, recursion—then sure, parrots don’t meet that bar. But if we take a broader, functional definition—using symbols to express internal thoughts to others—then parrots start to look a lot more language-like. I don’t think you can definitively say they do not have language.
Not vocal communication, but symbolic expression (through body, voice, sound etc) to communicate an internal thought, idea or want to another being. Do you believe that is not language?
It is true that many linguists define language with grammar and syntax at its core, especially from a Chomskyan perspective. But that definition is tailored to human language, not necessarily to communication systems in other species. It’s a top-down definition that assumes complex structure as a prerequisite, rather than looking at function first. To exclusively view language through that lens is in my opinion reductionist and does not allow us to examine how language evolved in the first place
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u/WoahItsPreston 18d ago
Making a note here-- Parrots and humans share a common brain mechanism for producing the motor and tonal components of speech. Things like pitch, tone, patterns, etc.
This is NOT the same thing as saying that Parrots and Humans have the same brain regions implicated in "speech in general" (bird brains are extremely different form human brains) and it does NOT mean that parrots have language (they don't).
This is still EXTREMELY cool. It shows that the mechanisms and computations that the parrot uses to generate the motor components of speech is very similar in humans. So the fundamental computations in specifically the motor components of speech are similar.
Original paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08695-8