Code and data for research papers exploring linguistic laws in sequences of ape gestures
Studies testing linguistic laws outside language have provided important insights into the organization of biological systems. For example, patterns consistent with Zipf's Law of abbreviation (which predicts a negative relationship between word length and frequency of use) have been found in the vocal and non-vocal behaviour of a range of animals, and patterns consistent with Menzerath's Law (according to which longer sequences are made up of shorter constituents) have been found in primate vocal sequences, and in codons, genes, proteins and genomes. Both laws have been linked to compression—the information theoretic principle of minimizing code length. Here, we explore these laws in great ape gestural communication.