4 ms·

I think we already have decent evidence of animals having synytax. Presumably Miyagawa means something like recursive syntax.

• mannykannot 2y ago
  I agree - and some animals even have semantics, as evidenced by those which have some intuitive understanding of alarm calls, and even more so when they do so for the calls of other species. On the other hand, I doubt they know they have syntax and semantics.
  • gwervc 2y ago
    > On the other hand, I doubt they know they have syntax and semantics. A lot of humans probably ignore it too. Most don't even ever heard about phonology, which is more fundamental to language than syntax.
    • mcswell 2y ago
      Humans cannot ignore syntax or semantics, if that's what you're saying. Every human language has both, and no one can speak a language without knowing (usually implicitly) both. As for phonology, languages have that (even signed languages), but I don't see it as being more fundamental than syntax or semantics. Indeed, while some writing systems have something analogous to phonology (context-sensitive letter shapes, as in Arabic script, but also in Greek), some don't. And it's possible to learn written language without any spoken language--deaf people do that.