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Scientists Discover a 'Phonetic Alphabet' Used by Sperm Whales, Moving One Step Closer to Decoding Their Chatter (www.smithsonianmag.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

We’re confusing a few different terms here - a phone in a phonetic “inventory” (let’s use that term instead of alphabet) is just a unit of sound*. A morpheme is a unit of meaning.

And we won’t know which is which in whale-tongue** until we can confirm what any one word means. (See: “Arrival”)

*theres more to it but I’m tired so I’m not explaining

** what’s the teeth grill thing they eat krill with? let’s use that instead of “tongue” 🤪

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Thank you, I was mixing up terms. I suppose I was thinking of phonemes, but I see they're also not purely the sound... Though (I didn't actually read the article yet!) I wondered if that is what they think they found: units of sound that can vary in exact audio/phonetic expression but 'mean' the same sound to the whales. (And from which longer audible communication structures are built.)

Okay, side thought, since I'm also tired and don't feel like looking things up properly:

In simple communication, such as one might assume whale-baleen* to be, perhaps a one to one mapping of phonemes to morphemes is likely.

*I think the baleen is that krill-filtering thing you were after?