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> The thing that makes humans nearly unique in the animal kingdom is structured language. But what is “structured language”? I would argue it’s just another la

by kindkang2024 1y ago

> The thing that makes humans nearly unique in the animal kingdom is structured language. But what is “structured language”? I would argue it’s just another layer of naming—naming applied to already named names. If animals have the ability to map leopard, snake, bush, tree in reality to names in their naming system, then why can’t they apply that ability again—create a new name like ‘leopard-bush’ or ‘snake-leopard’, simply by combining the existing solid names in their system? (Similarly, words like “in” could also be added.) You might say they can’t—because they lack grammar rules. And I’d argue the issue runs even deeper: they don’t have a valid naming system to begin with, nor the ecological fitness or incentive needed to develop further naming. If they can name ‘leopard’ within a valid system, that name should be reusable. They should be able to work on those names—as objects themselves. The process is the same. It requires the same abstraction: treat a thing as a nameable unit, then name it again. And that already starts to look like compositionality—or grammar. The real difference is that humans ended up with a robust naming system. We got lucky—we gradually invented stable symbols that let us name on top of previous names. We could write them down, save them, pass them on—and then build new names on top of that naming recursively, iteratively, and divisively. And that’s likely where the fitness gain came from. It’s a lucky, genuine self-bootstrap story.

adrian_b 1y ago
Making compound words is not an important difference between human language and the languages of other animals. Even in human languages the ability to make compound words seems to have appeared later. The main difference seems to be in having sentences structured into verbs and their associated nouns (which may encode various roles, e.g. patients, agents, instruments, beneficiaries, subjects of intransitive or copulative verbs, nominal predicates, results etc.). As far as we could determine until now, the language of most animals consists only of a set of nouns, which typically have an associated implicit action. For example: "Lion!" (meaning "Climb up the tree!"); "Eagle!" (meaning "Take cover under branches!"); "Children!" (meaning "Come here, to mother!"); "Bananas!" (meaning "Come here to eat good food!"); and so on. Some apes have been trained to compose very simple sentences, as complex as agent-verb-patient, but it is not known whether a similar form of communication exists between wild apes.

adrian_b 1y ago

Making compound words is not an important difference between human language and the languages of other animals. Even in human languages the ability to make compound words seems to have appeared later. The main difference seems to be in having sentences structured into verbs and their associated nouns (which may encode various roles, e.g. patients, agents, instruments, beneficiaries, subjects of intransitive or copulative verbs, nominal predicates, results etc.). As far as we could determine until now, the language of most animals consists only of a set of nouns, which typically have an associated implicit action. For example: "Lion!" (meaning "Climb up the tree!"); "Eagle!" (meaning "Take cover under branches!"); "Children!" (meaning "Come here, to mother!"); "Bananas!" (meaning "Come here to eat good food!"); and so on. Some apes have been trained to compose very simple sentences, as complex as agent-verb-patient, but it is not known whether a similar form of communication exists between wild apes.