Dr. Irene Pepperberg has recently published an interesting paper
in Language Sciences, regarding the ability of grey parrots to
learn new words for unfamiliar objects using phonemes they
already know. But, intuitively, the ability to create new words
out of known phonemes would require that a parrot grasp that
object labels are composed of individual parts which can be
interchanged and applied to new objects. Do parrots really have
that ability? The answer may hinge on whether parrots engage in
mimicry (mindlessly “parroting” back noise) or imitation
(intentional copying of a novel act to achieve similar results).
(Continued under the fold…………) As Pepperberg says: Imitation can
also be seen as the integration of a number of familiar actions
in novel ways to produce that novel act of particular interest
is what happens when the targeted novel vocalization can be
constructed from related elements already in the parrot’s
repertoire. This particular type of combinatory behavior is
actually a form of vocal segment