Perhaps now, even across species. Two new studies this week focused on whale song and found striking, structural parallels to human language, especially in humpback whales.

The researcher in that study took a broader approach, comparing 16 whale species with 51 human languages, and found that many of the whale songs worked for two other linguistic laws.

Humpback whale song contains some of the same structural hallmarks as human language, according to new research. An international team of linguists, developmental scientists, marine biologists and ...

In other words, they both contain recurring parts where the transitions between elements are more predictable within the part. Moreover, these recurring sub-sequences we detected follow the Zipfian ...

It found that 11 of the 16 whale species adhered to Menzerath’s law, with longer elements in their vocalizations being more likely to be made up of shorter elements. Curiously, in some species ...

In human language, a few words are used very frequently; most are relatively rare. A study published in Science today suggests that whale songs and human language share this pattern, which ...

Some scientists still maintain that because whale brains are so different, they can't be "intelligent." "To me, that's foolish," Fox said.

This suggests whale songs, like human language, are culturally learned. The study indicates that both species share a learning mechanism driven by cultural evolution, which favors statistically ...

There's a reason "antidisestablishmentarianism" is more a piece of trivia than vital to the English language. Because a word that long is not what human language favours. According to experts, we tend ...