The Good Fight Gašper Beguš on Why Language Doesn’t Make Humans Special
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Jan 24, 2026 
Gašper Beguš, an Associate Professor of Linguistics at UC Berkeley who studies interpretable AI and interdisciplinary language science. He explores whether whale songs and trained animals show language-like features. He discusses cultural transmission, recursion, and what AI reveals about language learning. Short, provocative takes on how humans and machines acquire communicative systems.
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We Lack Animals' Communication Window
- Wild animal communication is hard to interpret because we lack their 'language' window and recording is difficult.
- Gašper stresses that most animal vocalizations in nature remain under-analyzed compared to trained cases.
Whales Use Learned Dialects
- Sperm whales form learned dialects used in hunting and social life rather than mating displays.
- Beguš highlights learned vocalizations and babbling as evidence of cultural transmission among whales.
Recursion Isn't Found In The Wild Yet
- Recursion was long seen as uniquely human but hasn't been conclusively found in animals.
- Beguš notes absence of clear animal recursion but cautions our knowledge is incomplete.