Vocal Learning and Behaviors in Birds and Human Bilinguals: Parallels, Divergences and Directions for Research

Comparisons between the communication systems of humans and animals are instrumental in contextualizing speech and language into an evolutionary and biological framework and for illuminating mechanisms of human communication. As a complement to previous work that compares developmental vocal learning and use among humans and songbirds, in this article we highlight phenomena associated with vocal learning subsequent to the development of primary vocalizations (i.e., the primary language (L1) in humans and the primary song (S1) in songbirds). By framing avian “second-song” (S2) learning and use within the human second-language (L2) context, we lay the groundwork for a scientifically-rich dialogue between disciplines. We begin by summarizing basic birdsong research, focusing on how songs are learned and on constraints on learning. We then consider commonalities in vocal learning across humans and birds, in particular the timing and neural mechanisms of learning, variability of input, and variability of outcomes. For S2 and L2 learning outcomes, we address the respective roles of age, entrenchment, and social interactions. We proceed to orient current and future birdsong inquiry around foundational features of human bilingualism: L1 effects on the L2, L1 attrition, and L1<–>L2 switching. Throughout, we highlight characteristics that are shared across species as well as the need for caution in interpreting birdsong research. Thus, from multiple instructive perspectives, our interdisciplinary dialogue sheds light on biological and experiential principles of L2 acquisition that are informed by birdsong research, and leverages well-studied characteristics of bilingualism in order to clarify, contextualize, and further explore S2 learning and use in songbirds.

MORDVA - SUPRA-ETHNOS; MOKSHA, ERZYA - SUB-ETHNOSES? (Experience of interdisciplinary dialogue)

The prominent Mordovian historian-ethnologist N.F. Mokshin chronologically and consistently presented information about Mordovians, Moksha and Erzya in the mass-political publication "Mordovia through the eyes of foreign and Russian travelers". This information was taken from Iordan, Konstantin Bagryanorodnyj, Rubruk, Joseph, Strabo, Ptolemy Claudius, Abu Ishaq al'-Farisi al' Istakhri, Abu Zayd al-Balkhi, Ibn-Haukal', Julian, H. Fren, P.S. Savel'ev, A.Ya. Garkavi; “The Tale of Bygone Years” (Povest Vremennykh let), V.N. Tatishchev, P.I. Rychkov, P.S. Pallas, Johann-Gottlieb Georgi and others recent and modern historians and ethnologists. In the proposed publication, a comparativist, a specialist in comparative historical linguistics, gives consistent comments to those presented by N.F. Mokshin's views, assumptions and conclusions of travelers, geographers, historians, ethnologists, among whom there was not a single professional linguist. In particular, there are doubts about the rapprochement of the modern ethnonym Erzya with exoethnonyms: Aors (Strabo), Arsiites (Ptolemy Claudius), Aris (Joseph), which are offered other explanations. It is clarified that Artania, as one of the three names of the Eastern Slavs (Rus, Slavia, Artania) mentioned by K. Bagryanorodnyj, should be read [Art̠āniya] in the Latin transliteration of the Arabic original. [Arsaija / Ersanija] readings are distorted; therefore, the archetype of the modern ethnonym Erzya is erroneous. The idea is that the urbanonym ‘Art(a)’ and the name of the country Artania both have a Turkic-Bulgarian origin and the real basis ‘Art’ (“back”; “backside”; “north”, etc.), being the equivalent of the ancient name of northeastern Russia - Zales’e, which had not only a geographical, but political dimension.

Alone in the world? Indeed, and liberatingly so

How do we know that we can trust our viewpoints, our dogmatic principles and our religious convictions to constitute veracity, if not truth? Where can an arbiter be found for our deliberations to establish the trustworthiness of our viewpoints or belief systems, when we differ one from the other on religious matters, and in the context of religious conviction also differ in political and social endeavours? Van Huyssteen deserves commendation for his contribution to this discourse in developing the concept of a postfoundationalist epistemology in an attempt to justify theology’s integrity, and endorse theology’s public voice within our highly complex and challenging world. He suggests that the concept of human uniqueness might be the common denominator in the contributions of theology (in its specific understanding of the unique status of humans in God’s creation) and science (in its understanding of the unique stature of Homo sapiens in terms of biological evolution). However, the author, in this article, argues that given the radically diverse disciplines of science in our highly developed technological – and indeed within our current Covid-dominated context (on the one hand) and the pre-scientific context of religion (on the other hand), it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine how it can remain possible to find something like a common issue, a shared problem, a kind of mutual concern or even a shared overlapping research trajectory that might benefit precisely from this envisaged interdisciplinary dialogue. Is it possible that ‘alone in this world’ could mean something different than what Van Huyssteen suggests?Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: How do we know that we can trust our viewpoints, and our religious convictions to constitute truth? Van Huyssteen develops the concept of a postfoundationalist epistemology in an attempt to justify theology’s integrity within the discourse with science. However, the author in this article argues that it has become increasingly difficult for systematic theology to find a shared overlapping research trajectory that might benefit this interdisciplinary dialogue.

Cultural China 2020: The Contemporary China Centre Review

Cultural China is a unique annual publication for up-to-date, informed, and accessible commentary about Chinese and Sinophone languages, cultural practices, politics and production, and their critical analysis. It builds on the University of Westminster’s Contemporary China Centre Blog, providing additional reflective introductory pieces to contextualise each of the eight chapters. The articles in this Review speak to the turbulent year that was 2020 as it unfolded across Cultural China. Thematically, they range from celebrity culture, fashion and beauty, to religion and spirituality, via language politics, heritage, and music. Pieces on representations of China in Britain and the Westminster Chinese Visual Arts Project reflect our particular location and home. Many of the articles in this book focus on the People’s Republic of China, but they also draw attention to the multiple Chinese and Sinophone cultural practices that exist within, across, and beyond national borders. The Review is distinctive in its cultural studies-based approach and contributes a much-needed critical perspective from the Humanities to the study of Cultural China. It aims to promote interdisciplinary dialogue and debate about the social, cultural, political, and historical dynamics that inform life in Cultural China today, offering academics, activists, practitioners, and politicians a key reference with which to situate current events in and relating to Cultural China in a wider context.

“Genre”: A nomadic concept or an aesthetic universal?

The article raises the problem of the metadisciplinary interpretation of the term “genre”, which can be equally well defined as a nomadic concept or as an artistic universal. The author focuses on the question of the configuration of features defining the concept of genre in philology, art history, and musicology. Taking as a basis the general aesthetic principles of genre specification – functional, thematic, and structural – the author analyzes their genre-forming potential in various artistic forms and comes to the conclusion that understanding genre as a communicative and formally meaningful category provides an interdisciplinary dialogue, but at the same time, genre dominants can be different. For speech genres, such a dominant is a communicative goal, for painting genres – a subject content. The semantic parameter of the genre is interpreted in a similar way in literary criticism and musicology. The division into primary and secondary genres is a common feature for both philology and musicology. The structural parameter includes compositional features and elements of genre style, and the specific weight of this parameter is especially high in canonical (protoliterary and literary) and primary musical genres. The meaning of the structural features of the genre is inversely proportional to the visualization of an artistic form. This parameter is least significant for the genre identification of a painting.

Shifting Perspectives: A cinematic dialogue about Synthetic Biology in a more-than-human world

The short experimental film Shifting Perspectives stems from a collaborative research project initiated in 2019 in Sydney, Australia, during the ‘Choreographic Hack Lab—a week-long laboratory co-presented by Critical Path and Sydney Festival in partnership with the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (MAAS), which asked artists and academics to reflect and respond and rethink to the idea of the Anthropocene (Pini &amp; George, 2019). The film was later developed in 2020 during a Responsive Residency at Critical Path, Sydney, awarded to anthropologist and choreographer Sarah Pini in collaboration with Jestin George, biotechnologist and visual artist, and Melissa Ramos, visual artist and filmmaker.This work aims to open a multivocal interdisciplinary dialogue across screendance, performance and synthetic biology. Inspired by a recent conversation between two leaders in the field of synthetic biology (Sarah Richardson and Tom Knight) and their divergent approaches to working with microbial life (Agapakis, 2019), the film invites to consider how collaborating with microorganisms can reshape our future in a more-than-human world.&nbsp;

Nature in Common. Beyond the Nagoya Protocol

The Nagoya Protocol is a major international agreement for global biodiversity governance and was meant to put an end to the uncompensated exploitation of natural resources and knowledge in the Global South. Its objectives were to ensure greater justice and equity between providers and users of genetic resources, raise the profile of the contributions and knowledge of indigenous and local communities, and decolonise research, while promoting the conservation of biodiversity. Thirty years after the Convention on Biological Diversity from which it originated, the authors examine the legal and practical manifestations of this virtuous framework, which entered into force in 2014. While it has fostered recognition of the plural nature of knowledge and helped to establish traceability of resources, it has also contributed to imposing a commercial vision of nature and knowledge, exacerbating identity politics, and making access to biodiversity more complex in an era of globalised research. This book presents an interdisciplinary dialogue based on feedback from researchers and conservation stakeholders (local communities, managers of collections and natural parks). Looking beyond the Nagoya Protocol, it invites us to question the relationships between societies and nature in light of the ecological emergency. It is intended for anyone with an interest in the economics of biodiversity and environmental justice.

The Regulation of Media and Communications in the Borderless Networked Society

This Special Issue1 builds on the interdisciplinary dialogue that took place at the University of Windsor (Canada) symposium on the regulation of digital platforms, new media and technologies in the fall of 2019 [...]

A legacy of silence: the intersections of medical sociology and disability studies

Disability remains on the margins of the social sciences. Even where disability is foregrounded as a category of analysis, accounts regularly emerge in silos, with little interdisciplinary dialogue acknowledging the potential intersections and points of convergence. This discord is particularly acute within medical sociology and disability studies, yet there is mostly a legacy of silence about the relationship between the two disciplines. Drawing upon data from a qualitative study with parents of disabled children in the UK, I show the value of meshing ideas and tropes from medical sociology and disability studies to make sense of parents’ lived experiences. They described the challenges of living with 'impairment' and a need to readjust expectations. At the same time, parents were keen to not align with a deficit framing of their lives. They talked in affirmative terms about their children as sources of joy and vitality, perceived themselves as ‘normal’, and described convivial, even unremarkable, interactions in public spaces. Yet, parents encountered difficulties when navigating institutional settings and bureaucratic arrangements, or what was commonly referred to as ‘the system’. Their troubles were not located in their children’s bodies, but in—as per a disability studies sensibility—cultural and structural systems preventing their capacity to live well. I argue that both disability studies and medical sociology offer something to the analysis, thereby recognising the gains of not simply buying into the tradition of one worldview. I conclude by imploring for more concrete conversations between both disciplines.