Yes, those are minimum standards - if a child cannot reach those levels by the time they turn three years old, they should be tested for deafness or some other developmental issue. An average three year old will be far more advanced and it’s certainly common for kids to reach and pass them by two years (or 20 months, as mine did).
It makes the animals who reach that stage of human communication so much more intriguing, and that fact that they can’t seem to surpass it, so much more frustrating. They’re just so damned close.
Yep, they are minimum’s. That’s the whole point. They are the minimum standard for any 3yo who isn’t suffering form disabilities: ie any normal 3yo human meets those standards.
If a bird could surpass the standard that any normal four year old could meet, even the normal 4 yo at the tail end of the curve, then the bird would, by would, by defintion, have the linguistic ability of a four year old.
But they dont. They can’t surpass the linguistic ability of a three year old normal human, ie they can’t do better than the minimum milestones.
Any way this is somewhat of a hijack. The point is that no animals use langauge, so we can discount any argumants attached to the belief.
As far as mortality goes, I’m willing to concede that there is some evidence that elephants may have some concept of mortality though it’s far from clear they do.
I have seen no evdience that apes understand mortaility. I’ve seen mother ape carrying around a dead child for days after it has died, Not nurisng it and grieving but acting excatly as she would if the child were asleep. I’ve ssen the same mothers casually toss the child aside when t starts to stink. From that sort of behaviour it’s hard to see any evidence that they comprehend death. It seems more like they have a sense that there is somehting that is a child, and a sense that vast number sof other things are not children. There is no indication that they comprehend that one can become the other or that the corpse was once the child.
Or maybe, I don’t know, I read about the work and the associated controversy, in actual scientiffic publications rather than through watching discovery channel. If someone were to do crazy things like that they might be highly familiar with the work without having any clue about the author’s sexr. Or giving a rat’s.
Sheesh, there are authors whose work I have cited dozens or hundreds of times over a decade, and I still who only know of them as “Jablonski and Jones” or “Benson and Smith”. I honestly couldn’t tell you what their first names are or what their gender is.
Nor do I care.
Unless I meet them in person I’m highly unlikely to know an author’s or gender. I will almost never rembember an author’s given name even if I do meet them in person. After all, aven when the name is part of the citation I only type it into EndNote once.
But that’s just silly because everybody gets their information from the discovery channel and they are clearly faking it if they don’t recognise the author s face. :rolleyes:
Discovery channel? I’m not classy enough to watch that channel, no, I heard about Dr. Pepperberg’s work at a monster truck rally while drinking Budweiser and making fart noises between races. :rolleyes:
Truthfully, I do see how her gender is irrelevant to her work and how it is reasonable for someone to be familiar with the results of the study without taking note of the author’s gender. I had initially just meant to politely correct you on that fact but got carried away after reading through your brusque comment and took it to a level I shouldn’t have. My bad.
Right, so they’re not much use in establishing the argument that no three year old can use language, are they? (which is the only bit of this thread that really tempts me to participate)
And this is not using language HOW, exactly? Those are chimp priorities. A chimp doesn’t need to debate philosophy to use language.
That is complete nonsense, pure and simple. A three-yr-old may also not be able to debate philosophy, and will have a limited vocabulary and syntax, but to state baldy that “human three year olds don’t speak a language such as English or Cantonese” leaves any of your views open to complete dismissal.
I think we’d be quite likely to misunderstand intelligence different from ourselves - in just the same way that we tend to misunderstand cultures different from our own. I think we’d still recognise it as intelligence by virtue of the sort of things intelligence does.
I’d call this “use of a sound, knowing it gets rewards”.
My cat communicates with me, and I with the cat, but the cat has nothing I’d call a language. My cat makes a sound indicating it’s dinner time. I then often feed said cat. Same with attention. I don’t consider the cat has a language.
However, this is why I conceded some animals have communication modes that could be called a language.
And as I said earlier, if that is your standard of “language”, one which no researcher in the world agrees with BTW, then my dog can speak. For that matter goldfish can speak since they too can be tuaght to make coordinated muscular contractions in order to obtain food.
The difference beween language and cummincation via muscle contractions is rather profound. Not least it requires demonstrated knowledge that you are passing along information through what you are doing.
There’s no evidence whatsoever of such knowledge in phrases like “Give food hurry hurry. Food Food Now. Chase fun food hurry hurry”. The fact that it is babble, complete with random word additions and lack of syntax, suggests very strongly that the animal knows only that certain muscle contractions get it a reward at certain times, for unknown reasons. That is precisely what langauge is not.
Language is an intentional passing along of information to another individual in a codified manner. And while language may be used to obtain reward it is done with full knowledge that the user is passing along information that teh reciver can decode. It’s not just performing actions directly for reward. Any animal can do that, and I doubt that you would suggest that a jellyfish or a slug can use language.
Blake, there are many primatologists who argue that certain primates have language. In many of my classes on primates we have discussed primate language and I have a few friends and acquaintances working in the field. One of my professors who has worked with chimps can identify which field site a chimp is from just by hearing the chimp’s dialect. Having observed primates for a while myself, I can identity what certain calls mean for a particular group of rhesus macaques are ‘discussing’.
Many primate species have ‘calls’ which are basically words. When an individual gives a call, the other primates will react based upon the particular call and whoever gave it. These calls are often given in heavy forest canopies where visibility is limited and individuals must react based solely upon what they hear. I have a friend who studies how these calls are transmitted and they are taught to offspring by older primates. For example, one of my friends works on Capuchin monkeys and she says that the young give inaccurate calls all the time until they learn the language. They learn how to properly call by how the adults react to their calls and listening to the other adults calling.
The primates don’t just react blindly to the calls and they don’t just give the calls only to alert to certain phenomena. For example, if a male sees a rival male skulking around females, he might give a predator alarm call even if he doesn’t see a predator in order to get the other male to run away. He will pick a predator that will cause the other male to run away. For example, a snake call might get the monkey to run up into a tree, while a raptor call will just get it to look up. They are aware that other individuals will attempt to deceive them and, when we set up sites to play back alarm calls to determine how they are reacting to them, they will sometimes charge a site that gives a lot of fake alarm calls, believing that a misbehaving monkey is hiding in that area and causing mischief.
Certain groups are primates are also prone to changing the frequency of the calls or their willingness to give it based upon who they perceive to be in danger. For example, in some groups, males are more urgent about calls when a female or an infant is in danger.
What’s more, sometimes groups of different primates travel together in order to gain protection from predation. Those in the group will know the alarm calls of the other species in the group and react appropriately.
So there are quite a few experts in at least one field that believe that some animals have a form of language. A lot of it depends on what one defines as language, a topic which is a matter of debate.
Actually, Blake, I’m most upset at your statement that, and I will repeat it yet again, “I am saying that human three year olds don’t speak a language such as English or Cantonese.” Case in point, plucked from tonight’s viewing of “Wizard of Oz”: Upon seeing the Cowardly Lion jump through a window, Maddy, age 3, stated, “He jumped.” Hmmm, a subject? Yep. A predicate? Sho 'nuf. A complete and grammatical English sentence? Can’t deny it.
What I see you doing is a continuation of the rearguard action some anthropologists have been fighting for many years, trying to protect the specialness of humans. First it was Man the Tool User, but that has been put to the lie by many examples of animals using very simple tools. Ah, but only Man modifies things into his tools! Nope, chimps do, too. But then there was Man the Linguist, shot down most entertainingly in a Nova episode many years when a lengthy Chomsky quote stating that only Man has language containing morphology and syntax was juxtaposed with a quote of Washoe the chimp, pointing to a picture of a baby at the bottom of her cup, “Baby in a cup.”
And now, to protect Man as some sort of special creation, you are reduced to extending the definition of language so far beyond what any linguist 30 years ago would use that your claim has become clearly preposterous and contrary to the experience of any parent. A rearguard action is only used when a side has clearly lost on that front. Move your forces to another front, one where you still have a chance. You could try claiming that only Man has a soul! The cat people might argue, but cats, if they have souls, are clearly demonic and that doesn’t count.
Yep, and dogs have three legs. Case in point, plucked from a brief glance out the window, that animal over there has three legs and it is a dog. Hence dogs have three legs. Can’t deny it.
And dogs can build houses. Case in point, plucked from a brief glance out the window. There is a man building a house, and he is holding nails in his teeth. And a dog can be trained to hold nails in its teeth. So a dog can be trained to build houses. Can’t deny it.
I can’t even be bothered to look up the name of this blatant fallacy, it’s so obviously silly. You can’t just pick a single, reduced aspect of a complex process and say that because that aspect is exhibited by some other process that the two processes are identical.
If you honestly didn’t realise that the I don’t think we have much to discuss.
And if you did realise it and insisted on constructing such a farcical argument, well I think you’ve said all that you need to say to convince everyone of the strength of your position.
No, it is you who are trying to argue specialness. You, and others, insist on arguing that parrots are special because they can mimic human sounds, and apes are special because they look like humans. All absent any evidence whatsoever.
What I am doing, and what I have stated repeatedly in a very clear manner, is arguing against such specialness based on anthropomorphism. Nobody has been able to present any evidence whatsoever that what apes and parrot do is objectively different to what dogs are well known to do. And what dogs have been universally accepted as being able to do for the whole of recorded history.
For some reason you and others seem desparate to believe that parrots and apes are capable of communicating with humans in way that is objectively different from the way in which dogs communicate. You want to believe that the work with parrots and apes has changed the way that science views animal capacity for use of language. Well you’re wrong. There is no evidence they have done any such thing.
If your defintion of language is simply the use of muscular contractions to communicate information about emotional state or external stimulus then dogs can use language just as much as parrots or apes have been demonstrated to do. And science has always known that dogs can do that. Contrary to repeated claims made in this thread it’s not novel and hasn’t led science to revise its views on animals ability to use human language, with the exception that such animals [i[may* be able to learn more stimulus response patterns… or maybe not. But whatever way you look at it nobody says or ever has said that dogs can use human langauge because quite obviously that is not what langauge has ever meant. And if apes and parrots have no more human language ability than dogs then quite clearly apes and parrots don’t use language either
However as I have stated earlier, it is standard in the scientific world for language to require far more than simply muscular contractions for communication. Language in science requires sufficent theory of mind to understand that information is being coded, transmitted and decoded between sender and reciever. It also requires the communication be modular, with the modules able to be rearranged to produce novel expressions.
There is no evidence whatsoever that any animals are able to do the former with any greater ability than dogs have always been known to do. And the evidence of the latter is reatricted to the likes of Koko and Alex and has no support based on replicable (ie actual) science as Cecil’s articles and Dr. Deth’s posts have already discussed at length. This is the standard of language that was meant when the word “langauge” was invented, at a time when the communication ability of dogs was already well known.
Either way, your attmepts to try to shoehorn the abilities of parrots and apes into the category of language at this stage is simply making an argument for specialness based on anthropomorphism.
No primatologist argues that primates use human language, which is what is being discussed here. If you have evidence other wise then please present it. Kooks like Koko’s handler certainly made such claims, but that wasn’t science.
I have personally never heard of any primatologists arguing based that primates use any language. So if you have any refernces for this based on actual journal articles I’d love to see it.
However if you’ve read the thread you will note that this wouldn’t be particularly surprising. As I noted earlier, animals like prairie dogs and mongooses have what may be a very rudimentary language in the sense of having the capacity to communicate the location of specific predators and their direction and distance. So if primates have been found to do the same it wouldn’t be shocking. What would be shocking would be if a human couldn’t utilise such language perfectly, which has been the only claim that I made with reagrd to such rudimentary animal “languages”.
Colour me unimpressed. A major reason for a lot of these vocalisations is to mark territory. Of course they contain the information necessary for other individuals to work out which individual/band is making the calls.
The fact that some humans have managed to decipher that information is spectactularly uninteresting to me because it has been done so much. Ornithologists can identify individual birds by listening to thier songs. I used to have the ability to identify the two kookaburra clans that bordered our house by thier songs.
None of this makes these things langauge in any sense of the word, and I find the use of the word “dialect” to be very telling. But ask yourself, would would this professor also describe the variations in kookaburra songs as accents, or the songs of lyrebirds, which utilise partsof the songs of other species, as creoles? And if he wouldn’t why wouldn’t he when he rushes to describe chimp vocalisations using human langauge terms.
Yep, and I can do the same thing for chickens and cattle. That does not mean that cattle or crows have language. It means they communicate vocally.
Nothing new there. Chickens do exactly the same thing. In fact they do it better in the sense that they also use this communictaion to curry sexual favour, and they even “lie” to do so. But that doesn’t make it a language any more than my dog pawing at the door and whining is using language.
Well I’ve never seen that. I’ve seen some experts argue that some animals have a vocalisation system that has some elements in common with a rudimentary langauge. However no one has actually been able to demonstrate that it is fundmanetally different to a dog pawing at a door so they stop short of calling it language. But as I say, this is not in any way novel or controversial. It’s been well known for at least 30 years. And in all cases I am aware of humans can perfectly “speak” such “langauges” in very short order, contrary to claims that they can not do so made earlier in this thread.
Has it been that long. We really must make an effort to do so more often.
There is a small difference- I can understand what my cat wants as we know each other. Other dudes would say “Hey, your cat wants something, what is it?”.* However, some parrots almost certainly know a few words. They can say a word they gets them food, and often other humans other than their “master” can also understand it.
My example of my ASL expert freind and Koko fits in here- My freind could see (for example) the sign-word for “food”, but the rest of the “conversation” was in her mind gibberish and very very freely “translated” by Koko’s trainers. But she as an outsider could pick up “food” and make a fair guess the ape wanted to be fed.
So, Ape sign language and Parrot words are a step closer. But I agree, it’s not “language”.
It is just possible that dolphins do have a language. :dubious:
*“Bark, Bark, Bark!” “What is it Lassie, you say Timmys fallen in the well?”
This is exactly what I mean by anthropomorphism. You think it’s special solely and exclusively because the muscular contraction produces a mimicry of human speech, not because of any objective difference.
This is why science works with falsification and controls, not by counting the hits and never analysing the false positives. “Other humans other than their master can also understand it” is proof. It’s a hit. The trouble is that any system will occassionally score hits occasionally. Now to analyse this scientifically we need to attempt to falsify it, and we need a control.
One part of that could be a simple thought experiment, imagining a human language in which whatever muscular contractions your cat has learned to make to be understood is identical to the human language. In a society based on that language would other humans other than your cat’s “master” also often understand it? Of course they would.
Another part would be considering how this animal language functions within a radically different human language, such as the sign languages. In those languages would animals other than the parrot’s master understand them? Of course they wouldn’t. In a signing based society the parrot would have no better chance of being understood than your cat.
And before anyone objects by saying that a human would also fail such a test if you placed them into a society where they no longer spoke the language, both these experiments allow the animal to be trained for an infinite number of years before being tested.
So there is clearly no objetcive difference in the communication ability of the animals. The difference lies solely in how close their muscular contractions meet something that the humans involved already use as in their pre-existing language. Now you might choose to argue that the problem for the parrot lies with the interpreter but that no such problem exists for the cat. However the burden is then on you to prove such a difference exists. ATM Ockham’s razor demands that we accept no difference.
There is no evidence that they are not a step further away. As I demonstrated above, you only think they are a step closer because you are anthropomorphizing.
To be clear, I’m not really arguing for animals speaking English. I’m arguing against your statement claiming human children cannot. It took no special effort or wishful thinking to understand that child’s meaning when she said, “He jumped,” or, “I like jelly beans.” I am interested to learn on what you based your statement, and I will repeat it yet again because I still find it mind boggling, “I am saying that human three year olds don’t speak a language such as English or Cantonese.” Speaking a language does not require full fluency. At what age would you say a child can speak English, five? Seven? Twenty-five? Have you ever even been around a child?
