This Primate’s Calls Obey a Linguistic Law

　　狒狒的叫声也遵循语言规则

　　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.

　　在推特上交流是受到人工限制的：每一条推文最多为140个字符。根据一项分析表明每条推文所包含的字数越多，则每一个单词则越短。这似乎对推文来说是合情合理的：因为推文上只有有限的空间来供用户娱乐。但是奇怪的是，这种模式——较长的措辞，较短的单词，在我们的日常语言中也适用。这称为Menzerath定律。

　　“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.”

　　“这个定律本质上是信息压缩。”摩根·嘎斯森，是密歇根大学的心理学家。所以，Menzerath定律，如同其定义的一样，一个语言单位的子结构越多，则其子结构的长度越短。

　　Gustison and her colleagues tested out that rule of human language on the calls of geladas—relatives of baboons. 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. And the shorter the string? The longer the calls. The study is in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

　　嘎斯森和同事们利用狒狒的尖叫声检测了人类语言的规则。它们分析了很多尖叫声序列，这些尖叫声由六种不同的声音类型连成一串。他们发现，就如同Menzerath定律对人类交流信息的预测一样，狒狒尖叫的声音序列时间越长，则其组成部分越短。字符串越短?尖叫声越长。该研究结果发表在《美国国家科学院院刊》杂志上。

　　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.

　　噶斯特表示尖叫声的意义仍是一个谜。他们遵守规则表明正在研究一些重要的事情。“有趣的是在复杂的声音系统背后，存在一些普遍的规则。如，你说的话越多，就会发现更加有效的方式进行表达。我们认为狒狒也是这样，它们有很多要进行交流，所以，噶斯特发现这些策略会让它们的话语更有效。下次当你在有话要说时，想想这些也不坏哦~