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Science journalism strikes again. Between this and the Guardian's "dolphin language discovered" the findings have been completely overblown for what is really a
by glup 10y ago
Science journalism strikes again. Between this and the Guardian's "dolphin language discovered" the findings have been completely overblown for what is really a trivial finding. All this article really says is that cetaceans communicate in the audio domain; NPs are one way to conceptualize the subunits, which are obviously far from human phonology. But we still don't know anything about the structural properties, and hence the similarity to human speech. The paper says "we can assume that each pulse represents a phoneme or a word of the dolphin's spoken language." First, that's an assumption rather than an empirical finding; second, there's a pretty big difference between those levels of structure, and third, we'd want to know something about syntax, semantics, or pragmatics before we call it a 'conversation'.
That said, if this brings more money to the study of cetacean communication, then I'll accept whatever nonsense appears in the popular press. Pretty sure they were talking about the fusion reactors in Atlantis.
- anateus 10y agoI read the paper, and this is one case where the paper is almost as breathless as the journalists. It describes the findings, and then, as you say, starts the first of many paragraphs based on assumptions and pretty wild leaps. I think the key take away from this particular paper is actually the turn taking behavior, which they say hadn't been observed before.
- cloudjacker 10y agoI think phonemes miss the mark with dolphins. Their sounds simulatenously engage hearing senses while providing the sending party about additional metadata about the recipient. The sounds practically xrays the recipients body and surroundings for information about their immediate reaction and state of mind. This is much more advanced than anything we consider relatable.
- KMag 10y ago> The sounds practically xrays the recipients body and surroundings for information about their immediate reaction and state of mind. Do you mind clarifying? I think by "immediate reaction" you mean that echolocation gives feedback as to posture and muscle tone, which makes sense, though I'm not sure how the frequency ranges typically used for echolocation compare to the frequency ranges typically used for communication. By "state of mind" are you saying that state of mind produces physiological changes in the brain that are detectable via echolocation?
- cloudjacker 10y agoNo telepathy, just body analysis
- debt 10y ago"we can assume" seems they know it's an assumption. they're scientists. they're probably just trying to get people jazzed about cetacean communication. idk