3 ms·

A simple search on google scholar turns this up: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405722316301177 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti

by tensor 2y ago

A simple search on google scholar turns this up: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405722316301177 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240572231... For such a "well known scientific thing" I certainly haven't heard of it nor can find any evidence of your claim. Yes, most papers use communication instead of language, but that's because until more recently there has been little evidence that shows any other species communications have sufficient complexity to be called a "language." E.g. having words and sentences rather than signals with a given meaning. There is even a scientist claiming mushrooms have language https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsos.211926 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsos.2119... !

JohnMakin 2y ago
I didn’t mean “the word language is never used in a scientific text,” I meant there has never been a case in science where science has ever said “this thing $organism is doing is language.” You could get pretty nitpicky with the examples you provided - however I made a new year’s resolution not to fall into these silly little semantics traps on this site that I’m now failing, so I’ll bow out.
- shkkmo 2y ago
  Language is a system of grammar and syntax for converying meaning. Until you find evidence of those, calling something language is a baseless opinion. The closest we currently have to evidence of non-human language use I know of, comes from attempts to teach language to apes, (which is an example of some scientists saying "$organism is doing language", which you claim never happened) The general criticism was that the great apes did fairly well learning semantics but show limited to no syntactic ability. We do see semantic capabilities in other species and there's long been reason to suspect semantic content in whale songs. Deciphering the Alphabet of whale songs is a great step towards figuring out the semantic structure. When we do, I wouldn't be surprised if we find syntactic structures as well. Until then, calling whale song language is speculation. Do you have specific examples of places where we have both syntax and semanti
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - glial 2y ago
    Yes - prairie dogs. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/magazine/can-prairie-dogs-talk.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/magazine/can-prairie-dogs...
    - shkkmo 2y ago
      Combining semantic symbols is behavior we have evidence of in other species, but without evidence of structure impacting the relationships between the meanings we still don't have sytax. That seems like a good candidate for where we might find syntax given the apparent semantic richness, but we still have a lot of work to do deciphering prairie dog communication before we can make a scientific claim one way or the other about if it is language.

by tensor 2y ago

JohnMakin 2y ago

I didn’t mean “the word language is never used in a scientific text,” I meant there has never been a case in science where science has ever said “this thing $organism is doing is language.” You could get pretty nitpicky with the examples you provided - however I made a new year’s resolution not to fall into these silly little semantics traps on this site that I’m now failing, so I’ll bow out.

shkkmo 2y ago
Language is a system of grammar and syntax for converying meaning. Until you find evidence of those, calling something language is a baseless opinion. The closest we currently have to evidence of non-human language use I know of, comes from attempts to teach language to apes, (which is an example of some scientists saying "$organism is doing language", which you claim never happened) The general criticism was that the great apes did fairly well learning semantics but show limited to no syntactic ability. We do see semantic capabilities in other species and there's long been reason to suspect semantic content in whale songs. Deciphering the Alphabet of whale songs is a great step towards figuring out the semantic structure. When we do, I wouldn't be surprised if we find syntactic structures as well. Until then, calling whale song language is speculation. Do you have specific examples of places where we have both syntax and semanti
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- glial 2y ago
  Yes - prairie dogs. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/magazine/can-prairie-dogs-talk.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/magazine/can-prairie-dogs...
  - shkkmo 2y ago
    Combining semantic symbols is behavior we have evidence of in other species, but without evidence of structure impacting the relationships between the meanings we still don't have sytax. That seems like a good candidate for where we might find syntax given the apparent semantic richness, but we still have a lot of work to do deciphering prairie dog communication before we can make a scientific claim one way or the other about if it is language.