Menzerath's Law: What It Is And How It Describes Communication

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

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 cries. 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 communication between primates with these two laws.

• Related article: "Paul Watzlawick's Theory of Human Communication"

Menzerath's Law: what is it and what does it state?

Menzerath's Law, also called Menzerath-Altmann's Law (by 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 (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 Slovak linguist, prompted the investigation of quantitative linguistics. In this way, his findings were generalized to this branch of linguistics.

Later, Menzerath's Law was reformulated by Gabriel Altmann (1980 and 1984), also a Slovak linguist, for which reason it ended up receiving the name Menzerath-Altmann's Law.

Linguistic laws: 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 linguistic laws arise? It is language scholars (specifically, quantitative linguists) who do this work, and produce these laws, based on different formal models.

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

The two laws that predominate in all human languages ​​are: the aforementioned Law of Menzerath, and Zipf's Law of brevity. Furthermore, 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 talk about it.

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

• You may be interested: "The 28 types of communication and their characteristics"

Study: the gestures of chimpanzees

According to a 2019 study carried out by a team of British scientists and published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, where they analyzed the gestures of chimpanzees, these 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 to communicate with each other 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's, states that the length of a word is inversely proportional to the how often that word is used (i.e. the longer the word, the less it is used, and vice versa). The second, that of Menzerath, we have already explained.

Thus, broadly speaking, what this study reveals is that the language of monkeys and humans follows the same rules.

• You may be interested: "Zipf's law: a curious social and mathematical phenomenon"

Methodology: the gestures of chimpanzees

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

Through these 359 clips, they identified a total of 2,137 different gestures, which in turn, were 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

Regarding the two laws studied, Zipf's Law of contraction, and Menzerath's Law, it was observed how the first one was not confirmed; However, they did observe an inverse relationship between the duration of the gesture, and its frequency of use, in the case of a subgroup of shorter gestures.

Regarding the second law, Menzerath's Law, the researchers observed how the communicative gestures of the chimpanzees did obey this law, that is, the law was followed.

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

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

Further studies: other primate species

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

Thus, as the researchers in this study observed, the longest sequences of their screams are made up of shorter calls, on average.

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

In this species, males emit quite 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 Behavior, ScienceDirect.
• Wentian, L. (2012). Menzerath's law at the gene-exon level in the human genome. Complexity 17 (4): 49-53.