Animals That Speak: are they "really" speaking?

[steve_bank]

A gorilla taught sign language passed it on, and append to use it to del with new situations that were not scripted.

More relevant I think is describing watermelon as "water fruit". That's understanding, not parroting.

Please pay attention to who you reference for a quote. That was not me.

 

[bilby]

A gorilla taught sign language passed it on, and append to use it to del with new situations that were not scripted.

More relevant I think is describing watermelon as "water fruit". That's understanding, not parroting.

Please pay attention to who you reference for a quote. That was not me.

The board software thinks it was. Has someone hacked your account?

It is a pretty old post - you (or someone who had access to your account) posted it in March of 2021.

 

[Elixir]

“Animals That Speak: are they "really" speaking?”

They’re definitely vocalizing. Whether they have any idea what they’re “talking” about is doubtful.
Kinda like trumpsuckers.

I mean I provided an example of a dog painting something specific all on their own.

While I agree that my dog knows what she wants when she vocalizes, that video is unconvincing in the extreme. Want a list of why? (I’ll have to go to the desktop)

 

[robnisch]

I miss ravens! They may only be good mimics, but they make a lot of interesting sounds. They seem to be "aware". And they will interact with you. Good problem solvers as well.

 

[Elixir]

I miss ravens! They may only be good mimics, but they make a lot of interesting sounds. They seem to be "aware". And they will interact with you. Good problem solvers as well.

We have a robust population here, and I could tell some stories about them that would raise eyebrows.
Yes they do interact, seem to enjoy it and definitely regard the earthbound as inferior.

 

[Politesse]

Charles Hockett proposed a set of design features of human language that he thought might be used to compare interspecific communication on more objective grounds. This was in the 1950s, before much laboratory experiment on bird and primate speech has been conducted yet. For Hockett, it was not an either/or question. Some forms of animal communication mirror ours more closely, some are very different. His categories are worth considering at any rate:

Vocal-auditory channel: We favor the voice and our ears to carry the majority of semantic information. (excepting sign languages)

Broadcast transmission and directional reception: Speech is to a room, but we listen to individuals.

Transitoriness We rely on very temporary and passing means of communication, like speech or hand signs, that cease to exist the second they stop broadcasting.

Interchangeability Anyone can produce any valid comunication, in a human language (as opposed to, for instance, animals that produce wholly different sounds or pheremones by sex or role).

Total feedback We can hear ourselves and reflect on the speech we've produced.

Specialization We produce speech intentionally, not as a side product of other biological functions.

Semanticity Speech sounds have specific (albeit flexible) meanings.

Arbitrariness The actual sounds (phonemes) of speech are arbitrary, seldom tied intrinsically to their subject.

Discreteness We use a discrete set of sounds to produce consistent morphophonemic rules, like using the suffix -ed to mark a verb as past tense in English.

Displacement We can talk about things that aren't physically present, which might range from objects in another room to the very gods in the heavens.

Productivity We make up completely new words phrases, and a novel construction doesn't necessarily prevent a listener from understanding what you mean.

Traditional transmission Languages are learned from other humans.

Duality of patterning Human languages have a hierarchical structure of meaning (sentence, morpheme, phoneme) , and each tier operates on a somewhat similar logic of recombinant meaning.

Prevarication We can lie, and indeed do so very frequently.

Reflexiveness We can talk about and think about ourselves, in particular, about language itself.

Learnability Although there are thousands of languagers, fluency in any human language can eventually be acquired through study or experience.

 

[robnisch]

I miss ravens! They may only be good mimics, but they make a lot of interesting sounds. They seem to be "aware". And they will interact with you. Good problem solvers as well.

We have a robust population here, and I could tell some stories about them that would raise eyebrows.
Yes they do interact, seem to enjoy it and definitely regard the earthbound as inferior.

I find it interesting that the raven is part of the culture of so many northern people worldwide. In Alaska he is the trickster. They enjoy playing games with each other.

 

[Elixir]

We had one befriend our golden retriever. It was a sight … he’d fly low and slow, baiting our pup to chase, then they’d tear down the dirt road together. That dog succumbed to cancer too soon. The next year we got another golden and it was pitiful to watch that crow trying to get him to play. Broke my heart.

 

[Tharmas]

We had one befriend our golden retriever. It was a sight … he’d fly low and slow, baiting our pup to chase, then they’d tear down the dirt road together. That dog succumbed to cancer too soon. The next year we got another golden and it was pitiful to watch that crow trying to get him to play. Broke my heart.

I wrote a poem about a raven I knew once, which I've posted in the poetry thread because I didn't think it actually belonged in Natural Science.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

A gorilla taught sign language passed it on, and append to use it to del with new situations that were not scripted.

More relevant I think is describing watermelon as "water fruit". That's understanding, not parroting.

Please pay attention to who you reference for a quote. That was not me.

The board software thinks it was. Has someone hacked your account?

It is a pretty old post - you (or someone who had access to your account) posted it in March of 2021.

Maybe his cat typed it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

A gorilla taught sign language passed it on, and append to use it to del with new situations that were not scripted.

More relevant I think is describing watermelon as "water fruit". That's understanding, not parroting.

Please pay attention to who you reference for a quote. That was not me.

The board software thinks it was. Has someone hacked your account?

It is a pretty old post - you (or someone who had access to your account) posted it in March of 2021.

There's an editor bug that can misattribute text when you delete quoting levels. I probably didn't catch it.

 

[bilby]

A gorilla taught sign language passed it on, and append to use it to del with new situations that were not scripted.

More relevant I think is describing watermelon as "water fruit". That's understanding, not parroting.

Please pay attention to who you reference for a quote. That was not me.

The board software thinks it was. Has someone hacked your account?

It is a pretty old post - you (or someone who had access to your account) posted it in March of 2021.

There's an editor bug that can misattribute text when you delete quoting levels. I probably didn't catch it.

It's an impressive bug that not only misattributes a quote, but also generates a valid link to the post, and updates the username at that location too.

 

[steve_bank]

There are talking animals on the forum.

Squirrels running around the threads jabbering.
A couple of venomous snakes.
A few inept clumsy elephants knocking things over.
Alligators lurking waiting to jump up and grab you when you get too near the water's edge.
Parrots who repeat what they hear without knowing anything.
Screeching feces flinging chimpanzees,

Aesop lives.

I wider if we came to understand dolphin speak we might hear the equivalent of ' Kiss my ass humans'.

 

[steve_bank]

Either I had a brain fart or somebody changed the texts after I posted the comment.

Being omniscient and inerrant it must be the latter.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Either I had a brain fart or somebody changed the texts after I posted the comment.

Being omniscient and inerrant it must be the latter.

That isn't possible, though, because for any variation in any post of yours, the meaning of the Word of Steve stays the same.

 

[steve_bank]

Either I had a brain fart or somebody changed the texts after I posted the comment.

Being omniscient and inerrant it must be the latter.

That isn't possible, though, because for any variation in any post of yours, the meaning of the Word of Steve stays the same.

Actually years back I pointed out errors in a post on science. The next day my post was gone and the original post was changed.

Only a mod can do that.......I did not make a formal complaint because I really do not care.

Same here, don't really care.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

A gorilla taught sign language passed it on, and append to use it to del with new situations that were not scripted.

More relevant I think is describing watermelon as "water fruit". That's understanding, not parroting.

Please pay attention to who you reference for a quote. That was not me.

The board software thinks it was. Has someone hacked your account?

It is a pretty old post - you (or someone who had access to your account) posted it in March of 2021.

There's an editor bug that can misattribute text when you delete quoting levels. I probably didn't catch it.

It's an impressive bug that not only misattributes a quote, but also generates a valid link to the post, and updates the username at that location too.

The bug puts the text at the wrong quoting level.

 

[bilby]

A gorilla taught sign language passed it on, and append to use it to del with new situations that were not scripted.

More relevant I think is describing watermelon as "water fruit". That's understanding, not parroting.

Please pay attention to who you reference for a quote. That was not me.

The board software thinks it was. Has someone hacked your account?

It is a pretty old post - you (or someone who had access to your account) posted it in March of 2021.

There's an editor bug that can misattribute text when you delete quoting levels. I probably didn't catch it.

It's an impressive bug that not only misattributes a quote, but also generates a valid link to the post, and updates the username at that location too.

The bug puts the text at the wrong quoting level.

This is not an instance of that bug. There's no technical issue at all. The quote was correct and correctly attributed; It was just posted a long time ago.

 

[lpetrich]

I had created two threads on the origin of language, but with nearly identical OP's. I may have copied them both off of another forum's post that I'd made.
How did human language originate? | Internet Infidels Discussion Board - 2016
Theories of the Origin of Language | Internet Infidels Discussion Board - 2018

Lots of whimsical names for theories.

Over nearly all the animal kingdom, communication is in single blocks of meaning, for lack of a better phrase. Monkey Responses to Three Different Alarm Calls: Evidence of Predator Classification and Semantic Communication | Science -- their human equivalents: "Snake!" "Leopard!" "Eagle!"

Stringing together units of communication in different arrangements is *very* rare. Chimps can make two-sign and three-sign combinations, but that's as far as they can go.  Bird vocalization and  Whale vocalization -- some birds and cetaceans can go much further in making sequences of sounds, though their semantic content often seems very limited.

Some birds can do imitation, like parrots and mockingbirds, but they don't seem to understand what they are imitating.

How do dolphins name themselves? A study on signature whistles offers clues - "A new study claims that two influences best explain the differences among whistles: the local ocean environment and the demographics of different dolphin populations."

Young dolphins, within the first few months of life, display their creativity by creating a unique sound. These bleats, chirps and squeaks amount to a novel possession in the animal kingdom — a label that conveys an identity, comparable to a human name.

These labels are called signature whistles, and they play an essential role in creating and keeping relationships among dolphins. While the development of a signature whistle is influenced by learning from other dolphins, each whistle still varies in volume, frequency, pitch and length.