Have you ever heard of language laws? Broadly speaking, we can say that they are laws that establish how language works, and how it is structured. Two of the most important, in human language, are: the Law of Menzerath (or Law of Menzerath-Altmann) and the Law of brevity of Zipf.

On the other hand, it has been seen how these laws can also be applied to communication between primates, for example through their gestures and shouting. In this article we will focus on Menzerath’s Law , and we will tell you what science says about it, based on three studies that relate primate communication with these two laws.

Menzerath’s Law: what is it and what does it establish?

The Law of Menzerath, also called the Law of Menzerath-Altmann (after its discoverers, Paul Menzerath and Gabriel Altmann) is a linguistic law, which holds that, the longer a sentence (or linguistic construct) is, the shorter its constituents are (and vice versa).

This law also extends to words; thus, the longer a word is, the shorter its syllables or morphemes (and vice versa; the shorter the word, the longer its syllables). In other words, according to this law, longer language units are made up of shorter components .

This law was first described by Paul Menzerath in 1954. The contributions of Paul Menzerath, a Slovakian linguist, encouraged the research of quantitative linguistics. Thus, his findings were generalized to this branch of linguistics.

Later, the Menzerath Law was reformulated by Gabriel Altmann (1980 and 1984), also a Slovak linguist, so that it ended up being called the Menzerath-Altmann Law.

The laws of language: Menzerath and Zipf

Linguistics is that scientific discipline, in charge of studying the origin, evolution and structure of language . From it the linguistic laws are born, which are those that govern language.

But… how do the laws of language arise? It is language scholars (specifically, quantitative linguists) who do this work, and produce these laws, based on different formal models.

The formal models, in turn, are based on the parameters and components of language (specifically on four: phonetics, semantics, morphology and syntax). Finally, these laws are observed in all languages (i.e. they are "universal", regardless of the language).

The two laws that predominate in all human languages are: the aforementioned Law of Menzerath, and the Law of brevity of Zipf. In addition, these two laws have been found to govern the communication of a small number of primate species as well. In this article we will mention (and explain) two recent studies that speak about this.

However, it is not so clear whether, in addition, these two laws also affect, in the case of primates, their long-distance voice communication.

Study: the gestures of chimpanzees

According to a 2019 study conducted by a team of British scientists and published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B , where they analyzed the gestures of chimpanzees, they are subject to Menzerath’s Law, that is, the same law that governs human speech.

Thus, according to this study, the gestures used by chimpanzees, in order to communicate among themselves, follow the same laws that govern human speech . This study, specifically, focused on two laws: Zipf’s Law of Contraction, and Menzerath’s Law.

The first, Zipf, states that the length of a word is inversely proportional to the frequency with which that word is used (i.e. the longer the word, the less it is used, and vice versa). The second, that of Menzerath, has already been explained.

Thus, in broad terms, what this study reveals is that the language of monkeys and humans follows the same rules.

Methodology: the gestures of chimpanzees

Following their purpose, to discover if the chimpanzees’ gestures obey the same laws that govern our language, the scientists in the study analyzed a total of 359 communication clips, from up to 48 different chimpanzees.

Through these 359 clips, they identified a total of 2,137 different gestures, which were in turn divided into 58 types of gestures.

After analyzing all these gestures, they observed how 873 of them constituted separate units, while the rest constituted groupings of gestures (between 2 and 45 per group).

Results

As for the two laws studied, Zipf’s Law of Contraction and Menzerath’s Law, it was observed that the former was not confirmed; however, they did observe how there was an inverse relationship between the duration of the gesture, and its frequency of use, in the case of a subgroup of shorter gestures.

As for the second law, Menzerath’s Law, the researchers observed how the chimpanzees’ communicative gestures did obey that law, i.e. the law was enforced.

Thus, the conclusion reached by the researchers of this study was the following: chimpanzees’ gestural communication is (partially) subject to the laws governing natural human languages , as is the case with Menzerath’s Law.

The authors also added in their conclusions the importance of continuing to study these evolving communication patterns.

Further studies: other primate species

Another study, also from the year 2019, and which also refers to Menzerath’s Law, states that the morning cries of a family of primates, the gibbons ( Hylobatidae ), follow this law , as well as another one: Zipf’s law of brevity (already mentioned in the previous study).

Thus, as the researchers in this study observed, the longer sequences of their screams are composed of shorter calls, on average.

Finally, referring to another study, this time developed by the Technical University of Catalonia, a team of scientists verified that Menzerath’s Law is also fulfilled in a species of Ethiopian primates, called gelada ( Theropithecus gelada ).

In this species, males emit rather long sequences of calls (specifically, 25 calls made up of 6 different types of sequences).

Bibliographic references:

  • Gabriel, A. (1980). Prolegomena to Menzerath’s law. Glottometrika 2: pp. 1-10.
  • Heesen, R., Hobaiter, C., Ferrer-i-Cancho, R. & Semple, S. (2019). Linguistic laws in chimpanzee gestural communication. The Royal Society Collection. Biological Sciences.
  • Hernández-Fernández, A. (2014). The laws of linguistics in communication systems. Doctoral thesis, University of Barcelona.
  • Huanga, M., Ma, H., Ma, Ch., Garber, P.A. & Fan, P. (2019). Male gibbon loud morning calls conform to Zipf’s law of brevity and Menzerath’s law: insights into the origin of human language. Animal Behaviour, ScienceDirect.
  • Wentian, L. (2012). Menzerath’s law at the gene-exon level in the human genome. Complexity 17 (4): 49-53.