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I think the answer is no, and that the main difference between human language and other languages is its grammatical structure. The languages of other creature
by motters 14y ago
I think the answer is no, and that the main difference between human language and other languages is its grammatical structure.
The languages of other creatures seem to be context free, or just regular expressions of the type "if your hear sound X replace that with concept or behavior Y". Human language is a lot more generative and context dependent, allowing nested or recursive structures. A Turing Complete language allows arbitrary types of machines to be supported within the culture. Of course in practice these machines are never completely arbitrary, since there are plenty of biological constraints.
- CKKim 14y ago> The languages of other creatures seem to be context free, or just regular expressions of the type "if your hear sound X replace that with concept or behavior Y". I find this interesting but I'm not sure I fully understand. Could you give an example? (Hypothetical is fine!)
- netcan 14y agoBees communicate a remarkable amount of accurate info about the amount of food available at a particular source & where that source is. The other bees immediately respond by going there, in appropriate numbers to get it. I don't think people really understand exactly how all this works, but the assumption is that it's probably pretty mechanical. IE, the same way that the tasty sensation maps directly to your swallow action, dancing maps to a bee's "go that way" action. I think that this is that this is just an assumption based on bees' small brains. We don't really know if how fundamental the difference between bee dance understanding and human language understanding. We don't really know the mechanics of either.