|
 |
Project Speak Dolphin | ||
Tags: Animal | Scientific Research | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5134 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes  Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 17 of 34 15 May 2011 at 2:58pm | IP Logged | ||
Unfortunately, you'll have to make do with "Dauphinois sans peine" since no English course will be available. R. == 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6586 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 19 of 34 15 May 2011 at 3:47pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Interesting stuff, Paranday! I definitely think anyone claiming that chimpanzees can learn a human language just like
a human can is mistaken. However, I also think, based on what I've read (which admittedly isn't much, so I may very well be wrong), that what took place between Washoe and her handlers was communication. Whether it counts as language or not isn't that important to me. But you have a very good point in that these things easily become about something else than science. There's a lot of wishful thinking and going into experiments with an outcome in mind. And dolphins are maybe even more subject to that than chimps. There's dolphin therapy and dolphin whisperers and meditation seminars to awaken your inner dolphin. But hopefully good science will prevail, and it's a fascinating subject. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jazzboy.bebop Senior Member Norway norwegianthroughnove Joined 5422 days ago 439 posts - 800 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian | Message 20 of 34 15 May 2011 at 3:51pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I had much the same reservations, paranday.
The closest thing to language or at least some form of syntax that has been observed amongst primates has been shown by Nigerian putty-nosed monkeys: light- on-evolution-of.html">New Scientist Blog I also remember seeing a David Attenborough documentary about monkeys which talked about these Nigerian putty-nosed monkeys and it showed how one of these monkeys lied to its group by warning of a fake threat and it then ran down to where the monkeys had been feeding on fallen fruit and started eating it all for itself. Clever little buggers. Edited by jazzboy.bebop on 15 May 2011 at 4:03pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6707 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 22 of 34 16 May 2011 at 2:31pm | IP Logged | ||
|
The attempts to teach apes and dolphins to make human sounds have failed miserably, and those based on sign language are apparently subject to subjective interpretation. Luckily there is one alternative, namely to use screens with a large number of symbols - either you activate a sign or you don't, it's a digital world which cannot be subject to interpretations.
And the texts I have read plus the videos and TV programs I have seen point to one conclusion, namely that you can teach apes and dolphins to respond AND answer using such methods. But even the smartest chimps I have seen or heard about could only manage sequences of maybe 3-4 signs in a row, and I am fairly sure that we won't see an orang or dolphin answering with a string of 10 signs anytime soon. Actually they already communicated on this level before we tried to communicate with them, - I saw just yesterday a program about dolphins where it was mentioned AND exemplified that each dolphin invents a special sound sequence as its personal 'name', which then doesn't change through time. Smart! I have yet to see a newborn human indicate that she wants to be known as Josephine Beauharnais! The thing that is lacking in animal communication is a flexible syntax. Edited by Iversen on 16 May 2011 at 3:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5230 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 23 of 34 17 May 2011 at 7:01pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Something tells me when we finally break what Delphinese/Cetacean languages there are to break, we'll discover all they are interested in talking about is fish...
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| etracher Triglot Groupie Italy Joined 5338 days ago 92 posts - 180 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish Studies: Modern Hebrew, Russian, Latvian | Message 24 of 34 17 May 2011 at 10:50pm | IP Logged | ||
In general, I don't think that there is that much to add to paranday's post. The quote above, however, made me think of several things. First, not all forms of communication are language. I don't think that there is anything wrong in admitting that other species are not capable of learning human language. This does not mean that these species are incapable of communication (nor, however, does their ability to communicate mean that they can use language). This does not reflect badly on their intelligence nor on their communicative abilities, or anything else: it just means that they are not homo sapiens and have not acquired the same adaptations that humans have. If we made an experiment in which we tried to prove that human beings can learn echolocation by blinding young children and forcing them to use sound as their only guide in moving through obstacle courses, we might perhaps discover that, after years of dedicated training, they become better than the average person at finding their way around these obstacle courses based on the sounds they hear. However, we wouldn't likely discover that they become equal to cetaceans or bats in their ability to use biosonar. Nor would anyone insist that their limited abilities demonstrate that humans really are capable of echolocation in the same way that other species are. As for paranday's question: obviously Koko and Washoe are not frauds. The researchers who have isolated them from their kind and tried to force them to be like us, all in the vain desire to try to prove that what appears rather clearly to be an evolutionary adaptation found only in homo sapiens is actually to be found in other species as well? I do not think fraud is the correct word to use here: something stronger is in order, in my opinion. I do feel bad for these poor animals, though. 5 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
