(I’m not sure if there’s a factual answer to this, so Mods feel free to move if you want. But I am looking for some science behind my query).
Recently, we had a thread about whale sounds and whether they have language.
As I thought about it, it occurred to me that both dogs and cats know their names, and (at least in my experience with dogs) a bunch of other phrases.
They also will “speak”, in that a dog or cat might bark or meow to get your attention. I had a dog who would whimper when she wanted to go outside, and my cat will sometimes chirp when I talk to her.
But, of course, neither can talk.
So why would they be able to understand the concept of language? It’s like they know that words can be used to convey ideas, and sometimes they even want to convey ideas with their own voice, despite having little ability to do either.
Does that suggest that language is innate amongst the animal world (or at least, amongst mammals), but humans are uniquely able to take advantage of it due to our ability to enunciate?
Or is it some reflection of long term evolution - pets that are communicative are more desirable, and therefore our selective breeding has actually resulted in an animal that is more human-like than its ancestors?
My thought as well - we associate it with ‘language’ because we use sounds like ‘sit’ or ‘heel’ etc that mean something to us and train them to do what we expect at those sounds.
We could use a sound like ‘farfugnugen’ as the sound to do the action associated with ‘sit’, and it would work just as well.
As far as thier language to us, similar construct - they make sound ‘whimper’ - you go to the door and let them out. They just trained us to thier sound - they could just as easlily bark, scratch, etc - if they get a consistent behaviour with a set of actions, they will repeat it.
I guess you can call it a language of sorts - but its more ‘learned behaviour’.
Human speech is undoubtedly language. A creature able to make exactly one sound, which it does at random, is almost certainly not language.
Where is the dividing line between those two limit cases?
I’m not sure that being able to express 2 or 3 broad ideas via noise rises far enough to be graced with the term “language”. Does that amount to intention? IMO yes. The creature knows its current state (e.g. indoors), a desired different future state (e.g. outdoors), and has learned that noise X facilitates the transition. So it makes noise X.
I disagree. I think there’s a distinction between language and simpler communication, which I’ll call signaling.
Signaling is when you use a single sign to communicate a single meaning. Language is when you’re using multiple signs and the organization of those signs is what is communicating the meaning.
If dogs and cats don’t have language, then how do they learn parts of ours? I’d presume that they’d have no conception of the process of matching sounds with ideas or messages.
I can’t emit light and oscillate the frequency and pulse durations so as to encode my thoughts.
That doesn’t keep me from understanding that it could be done, and I could possibly even learn to read it, or at least recognize parts of it, if I were surrounded by intelligent critters that communicated that way.
What we do is learn their language. A lot of it can be body language that we all are familiar with. Body language is often how we can tell if they are ill.
They are taught certain words from us that we want them to know. Sit, stay, heal, come, dinner, break, wait - are the ones that our dogs know. I’m sure they know others that I’m not thinking off.
They also read body language from us. Slap your thigh can be a come to me sign. A smile a reward.
Try “speaking” to your dog with the words out of order. I bet it’ll work just as well. Or with nonsense words.
Like the old Far Side comic where one panel is labeled “What you say” and shows a man talking to a dog “Now Ginger, you’re such a good dog, would you like to go outside, Ginger”. The other panel is labeled “What they hear” and reads “blah Ginger blah blah blah blah Ginger.”
Here’s a trick I like to play with pet-owning friends of an appropriate sense of humor. Speak to their little dog in a friendly talking-to-a-child tone with a smile on your face but say something like:
Now Ginger, you’re such a tasty little dog. I think it’d be great fun to slit you open, filet you like a sausage and grill your innards. Maybe we could slice up your flanks and make fajitas. Wouldn’t that be fun? Yeeeessss, it sure would be fun wouldn’t it Ginger?
The little dog will be beaming back at you with its tail wagging madly at the prospect of being gruesomely murdered, dismembered, and eaten. You can even mimic slicing it’s belly open with your fingertip at the appropriate spot in the speech, and it’ll probably be shivering with delight as you do so.
Whatever that dog is demonstrating, knowledge of language is not it. Knowledge of human tone of voice and posture? Sure. Language? Hardly.
Dogs and cats understand language to some extent, but obviously they don’t comprehend much language. They can understand certain words, certain phrases, certain concepts, but you can’t use language to explain more complex concepts to them. They do understand the most basic concept of speech, communication through the use of established words.
I don’t know what the ability of dogs and cats to speak has to do with it but my dogs can speak, one of them way too much, and I have had cats that spoke too. I not fully fluent in their languages but I’ve picked up a few words and phrases. Even if they couldn’t speak at all there are people who can’t speak but they still understand the concept of language.
I don’t presume to think that they are listening to an entire sentence and translating it. But dogs do know individual words (so there’s no order, and a nonsense word wouldn’t work).
If that be true, then the dog knows its name. That is a conception of language (I.e. this sound means “me”).
I believe something similar happened in National Lampoon’s European vacation- the family orders from a French waiter who makes all sorts of crude comments while they relish how nice he seems. If not for subtitles, English speaking audiences wouldn’t have understood the joke.
Excellent point!
It seems to me that cat and dogs are mute, not that they don’t have language.
Dogs do get words, Chaser the champion Border Collie apparently understand 1022 nouns. Some Border Collies get adjectives also. So in addition to nouns they can be told to fetch The ball with the star or the Red ball.
But these most advance Border Collies don’t need to be trained in blue ball. They know ball and they know blue. It is quite amazing.
I don’t think any cats come close to even a fairly smart dog. It has a lot to do with Dogs being pack animals and they form a pack with us. Cats have other reasons to hang out with us.
I just experimented with my dog, Dino. I held up objects from my desk and repeated the name for each several times. “Rock…socks…magnet…bottle.” In return I got the most confused blank stare I have ever seen. It was cute, though.
Well, sure…he’s probably wondering why you are just showing him things. He’s probably trying to figure out what message you are sending him.
If you continued this education, I’m sure your dog could learn these words. It’s just that you are beginning the lesson, so he’s trying to figure it out.