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The other side of the coin is that there really might not be any actual pattern to pull out of any single dolphin's vocalizations. Just because dolphins posses

The other side of the coin is that there really might not be any actual pattern to pull out of any single dolphin's vocalizations. Just because dolphins possess a possible capacity for language doesn't mean that any language exists. I'd figure the mutlitude of dolphins in the wild all establish personal colloquial parlances, organized according to the whims an experiences of each individual pod. Kind of like in that movie Nell, where the children grew up learning to make noises like their stroke-afflicted mother. If there are no regimented social constraints to enforce teaching and learning, wild animals have no externalized motive for establishing the codified norms of a symbolic language.

panglott 12y ago
I don't understand the distinction that you're making here...a lack of intergenerational transmission? Isn't all language at heart a personalized colloquial parlance? The contemporary world of highly codified standard international languages is novel and weird. If the dolphins, in their signature whistles, invent arbitrary symbols that are assigned meanings in a social context, that's ultimately linguistic behavior that outmatches even the most precocious sign-language-using ape.
snowwrestler 12y ago
I agree with this idea. Wordless shouts can get a lot of communication done on a football pitch when accompanied with some gesturing and a rich understanding of the immediate context. Even among humans, with our highly codified and atomic language, there is a lot of research that hints at how important nonverbal cues are to communication. Dolphins can seemingly identify themselves verbally, but does that mean it's part of language? It doesn't seem to be conceptually different the fact that big cats and dogs identify themselves to each other, although they do it with complex chemical markers instead of sound waves. But I don't think anyone expects to find a highly codified chemical language of "words" among cats.

panglott 12y ago

I don't understand the distinction that you're making here...a lack of intergenerational transmission? Isn't all language at heart a personalized colloquial parlance? The contemporary world of highly codified standard international languages is novel and weird. If the dolphins, in their signature whistles, invent arbitrary symbols that are assigned meanings in a social context, that's ultimately linguistic behavior that outmatches even the most precocious sign-language-using ape.

snowwrestler 12y ago

I agree with this idea. Wordless shouts can get a lot of communication done on a football pitch when accompanied with some gesturing and a rich understanding of the immediate context. Even among humans, with our highly codified and atomic language, there is a lot of research that hints at how important nonverbal cues are to communication. Dolphins can seemingly identify themselves verbally, but does that mean it's part of language? It doesn't seem to be conceptually different the fact that big cats and dogs identify themselves to each other, although they do it with complex chemical markers instead of sound waves. But I don't think anyone expects to find a highly codified chemical language of "words" among cats.