(单词翻译:单击)
听力文本
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.
Sort a 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.
"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."
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 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.
参考译文
在推特上交流会受到人工限制：每一篇最多是140个字符。
而最近的一项分析表明每篇推文内容越丰富，单词越简洁。
这似乎很合情理：因为推特只有有限的空间让用户进行分享。
但奇怪的是，这种较长的措辞，简洁的单词模式在我们的日常语言中也同样适用。
这被称为蒙采拉特定律。
“本质上这是一种信息压缩理念。”
密歇根大学的心理学家摩根·古斯特森说道。
因此蒙采拉特定律就如同其定义的一样，一种语言结构越长，则构成它的成分越短。
古斯特森和她的同事在人类的亲戚狒狒身上检测人类语言的这种规则。
研究人员对狒狒的上千种叫声序列进行了分析，而这些叫声由6种不同的声音类型串在一起。
而结果他们发现，就像蒙采拉特定律对人类交流信息的预测一样，狒狒叫声也遵循这种规律，声音序列时间越长，其组成部分越短。
那声音类型串越短会怎样?叫声越长。
这项研究已在《美国国家科学院院刊》杂志上发表。
古斯特森表示狒狒这种叫声有何意义仍是未解之谜。
但狒狒的叫声也遵循这种规律表明一些非常重要的事情。
“有趣的是复杂的发声体系背后蕴含着一些普遍的规则。
而你说的话越多，就会发现更为有效的表达方式。
我们认为狒狒的情况是，由于要交流的东西很多，因此它们采用这样的方式让其叫声更为有效。
下次当你在有很多话要说时，不妨考虑下这种规律。
译文为可可英语翻译，未经授权请勿转载！
重点讲解
1.turn out 关掉;结果是
例句:If I had known my life was going to turn out like this, I would have let them kill me.
如果我早知道自己的人生结局会是如此，我当时宁愿让他们杀了我。
2.at least 至少
例句:He's been away for at least a week.
他走了总有一个星期吧。
3.according to 根据
例句:Philip stayed at the hotel, according to Mr Hemming.
据亨明先生所说，菲利普住在旅馆里。
4.vocal system 发声系统
例句:As you are training your vocal system, watch the speed of your speaking.
在训练自己的发声系统时，要留意自己的语速。
