Abnormal Interests

Personally, I think if heaven is good enough for humans, it's certainly good enough for more deserving species :)

I can't believe anyone can still think that humans have the monopoly on language, but oh well, that's just me. I guess I just have been blessed with super-intelligent pets with strong communication skills my whole life. Biblical delusions about human superiority over animals are still alive and well in the 21st century methinks. In the article it reads "Chomsky contended that the neural requirements for language developed in humans after the evolutionary split between humans and other primates." And yet my dog salivates at the mere mention of "dog biscuit". Obviously symbolic representation (aka spoken or visual language) is capable of being understood by a wealth of differing social animals, not just humans. Plus, if social creatures couldn't in some way communicate back (and all language really is in the end is communication), then creatures wouldn't be "social", would they? It's silly at this point for anyone to deny that human language really isn't so special after all.

Whether the language spoken by these primates is "complex" enough for people to accept, obviously the very fact that they can learn, use and teach their offspring sign language at all clearly shatters all the bible myths of yore despite fanatic denialists.

I guess I'm just abnormally intrigued (as well as pissed off) by the controversies of xenolinguistics :)

Gordon,

Thanks for the comment. I'm more than a little confused on the subject of language in other animals. A lot of this is an issue of definition. However, if I read Pinker and Chomsky correctly, I believe they are talking mostly about syntax and analogy (metaphor) formation as sign of language ability. As I'm sure you know, there are anthropologist that think that even H. sapiens didn't have language capability until about 70 kbp. I worry that this is based on a lack of evidence rather than on real physical evidence but it is hard to deny that something did change in that time frame. Human life appears to have become richer.

I do agree that animals have amazing communications skills, even if I wouldn't necessarily call it language. Our current cat is an accomplished liar. When caught doing something he shouldn't do, he often lies, by way of body language, about his intentions.