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The language of the gibbons | ||
Tags: Animal | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Meelämmchen Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5084 days ago 214 posts - 249 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 1 of 11 10 February 2011 at 9:26am | IP Logged | ||
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Scientists have now found out that gibbons not only sing (to warn their fellows of predators or to attract mates), but that they developed different accents. By identifying the songs gibbons are singing you can say where they are from. That's so beautiful!
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110207073751.ht m http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/061221074623.ht m http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOi8fGCT5G0 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 2 of 11 10 February 2011 at 12:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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.. but that still doesn't make those wailing sounds a proper language. You can also hear differences between words of different classical composers and even composers from diferent countries.
Marginally closer to real language are the utterances that in a specific situation indicate a specific content, such as warnings about dangers on the ground versus dangers from above, different food sources etc. But even those utterances lack a syntax that makes it possible to form complex messages from simple, but standardized ingredients. But as long as people refer to styles using the word 'language' I suppose we have to accept that the word has this fuzzy derived use. Sigh... Edited by Iversen on 10 February 2011 at 12:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mr_chinnery Senior Member England Joined 5758 days ago 202 posts - 297 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 3 of 11 10 February 2011 at 4:21pm | IP Logged | ||
ANIMALS CAN NOT TALK!!!! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Meelämmchen Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5084 days ago 214 posts - 249 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 4 of 11 10 February 2011 at 7:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I was unsure about the use of the term language myself, instead I could have named it "communication". After all I don't like that term in general and liked also the idea of animals kind of 'speaking' (of course they do not so in a human and elaborated way). But I didn't know some have so much of a problem with that. Ok, we are here on a language forum...
I also came across an article on wired.com (not weird), which is speaking of syntax at apes' 'communication': “This is the first evidence we have in animal communication that they can combine, in a semantic way, different calls to create a new message,” said Alban Lemasson, a primatologist at the University of Rennes in France. “I’m not sure it has strong parallels with humans, in the way that we will find a subject and object and verb. But they have meaningful units combined into other meaningful sequences, with rules imposed on how they’re combined.” Lemasson’s team previously described the monkeys’ use of calls with specific meanings in a paper published in November. It detailed the monkeys’ basic sound structures and their uses: “Hok” for eagle, “krak” for leopard, “krak-oo” for general disturbance, “hok-oo” and “wak-oo” for general disturbance in forest canopies. A sixth call, “boom,” was used in non-predatory contexts, such as when calling a group together for travel or arguing with neighboring groups. Though some researchers have ascribed syntax to animals, it’s never been formally demonstrated — until now. “People have criticized the use of ’syntax’ to describe animals just because they produce sequences of sound. They say that each unit has no meaning, that no rules explain how they’re combined,” said Lemasson. “Here we have rules of combination.” For example, male monkeys called “boom boom” to gather other monkeys to them, but “boom boom krak-oo krak-oo” meant that a tree or branch was about to fall. Adding a “hak-oo” to that sequence turned it into a territorial warning against stray monkeys from neigboring groups. Multiple “krak-oo” calls added to an original “krak” meant not only that a leopard was in the area, but that it posed an immediate threat. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/12/monkey-talk/ Especially wak-oo and hak-oo seems to imply almost a kind of a rule. But I just read that there and am no expert in that field. Edited by Meelämmchen on 10 February 2011 at 7:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mr_chinnery Senior Member England Joined 5758 days ago 202 posts - 297 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 5 of 11 10 February 2011 at 11:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Animals communicating is nothing new, but humans are the only ones with languages.
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=65071 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| CaucusWolf Senior Member United States Joined 5273 days ago 191 posts - 234 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Arabic (Written), Japanese | Message 6 of 11 12 February 2011 at 5:59am | IP Logged | ||
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They've been trying to convince us that Apes have the ability to speak for decades. Sure, the animal can learn to do things when he is told something, so can dogs. They can teach the ape thousands of words in the course of 6 years and yet it still cant put them together in a meaningful way.
The people working on this research are obsessed with something that will never come to fruition. I think Chomsky put it best when he said "This is some sort of fanaticism." Animals can communicate in many ways, but there is a fine line between communicating and speaking. Edited by CaucusWolf on 12 February 2011 at 6:18am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Aquila123 Tetraglot Senior Member Norway mydeltapi.com Joined 5307 days ago 201 posts - 262 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Italian, Spanish Studies: Finnish, Russian | Message 7 of 11 12 February 2011 at 11:32am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, abinals can obviously communicate, and if you study animal communication you will naturally detect patterns and structures and for those you need some terminology
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| CaucusWolf Senior Member United States Joined 5273 days ago 191 posts - 234 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Arabic (Written), Japanese | Message 8 of 11 16 February 2011 at 5:50am | IP Logged | ||
Animals can communicate(showing emotion and immediate needs.)but in no way is it structured like a human language, nor will it ever be. Animals simply lack that part of the brain that makes us able to speak. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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