This Primate's Calls Obey a Linguistic Law
狮尾狒的叫声符合语言学定律

The vocalizations of the gelada, a baboon relative, appear to follow a linguistic rule called Menzerath's law.
狒狒的近亲狮尾狒(gelada)，其发声原理符合语言学上的门泽拉夫定律(Menzerath's law)。

播音/撰文 克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔
翻译 Meatle
审校 丁可含

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.
在推特上发帖的长度是有限制的——你最多只能发表140个字符。据一分析研究显示，一个帖子中的单词越多，每个单词的长度也会更短。因为在推特上发表内容的长度被限制，类似地说法不无道理。然而奇怪的事情在于，这种词组越长单词就越短的模式同样适用于日常的语言习惯。这称之为门泽拉夫定律(Menzerath's law)。

"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."
“这种想法本质上是对交流的内容的必要的压缩。”密歇根大学(University of Michigan)的心理学家，摩根·季提森(Morgan Gustison)说。“因此对于门泽拉夫定律，你能理解为整体越大，部分越小。”

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 theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [Morgan L. Gustison et al, Gelada vocal sequences follow Menzerath’s linguistic law]
季提森和她的同僚用一种狒狒的近亲－狮尾狒(gelada)测试门泽拉夫定律。【叫声】她们分析了上千个声音样本，这些样本可以归结为6种类型。她们发现就像这个规则预测的人类交流方式一样，这些狒狒的一段叫声越长，构成叫声的声音单元越短。【叫声样本1】而叫声长度越短，构成叫声的单月则越长。【声音样本2】该研究发表在《美国国家科学院论文集》(The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)。

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.
季提森说他们尚未了解这些叫声的意义。然而，这些叫声符合定律可能预示着一些重要的事情。“这种现象可能昭示着可能存在一些复杂声音交流系统共同遵守的准则。因此你说得越多，就越能找到更有效表述的方式。而我们在狒狒的例子中可以看到，它们有很多东西要说，因而它们寻找更为高效的表述方式。”下一次如果你有很多东西要说，不妨试试这个办法。