Talking birds do not dissect the sounds of their imitations into discrete units. Polly and Molly do not rhyme for a parrot. They are as different as hello and good-buy. One property of all human languages is the discreteness of the speech or gestural units, which are ordered and reordered, combined and split apart. Generally, a parrots says what it is taught, or what it hears, and no more. If Polly learns "Polly wants a cracker" and "Polly wants a doughnut" and also learns to imitate the single words whiskey and bagel, she will not spontaneously produce, as children do"Polly wants whiskey" or "Polly wants a bagel" or "Polly wants whiskey and bagel.