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SUMMARY:Linguistic laws in primate vocal communication - Prof Stuart Sempl
 e\, University of Roehampton
DTSTART:20160127T163000Z
DTEND:20160127T173000Z
UID:TALK63359@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Aurélien Mounier
DESCRIPTION:A fundamental goal of the life sciences is to identify univers
 al biological principles - the basic rules of organisation that underpin d
 iverse natural phenomena. In this talk\, I will argue that one way to iden
 tify such principles is to explore the universality outside our own specie
 s of the common statistical patterns of human language known as linguistic
  laws. I will firstly describe two linguistic laws\, Zipf’s law of brevi
 ty and Menzerath’s law\, and explain the tests we have carried out to se
 e if they hold in non-human primate vocal communication. I will then descr
 ibe the common mathematical principle that we have demonstrated to lie beh
 ind these two laws\, and explain why we feel this may be a universal princ
 iple underpinning not only primate vocal communication\, including human l
 anguage\, but also biological information systems much more broadly.
LOCATION:BioAnth Lecture Theatre (Room 41)\, Division of Biological Anthro
 pology\, Pembroke Street\, Cambridge\, CB2 3QG
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