Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Since I'm....

...not able to post on Panda's Thumb, I'll post this here.

Reed Cartwright posted an article about language here:

http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2011/12/bards-poets-and.html#_logout

Here's my response:

Reed,

I'm amazed that you would say this:

"Humans have a unique form of complex communication called language."

Not only is language not unique to humans, but some of human language (both "spoken" and body language) is understood by many other species.

Now, you can argue that language is unique to humans because the sounds humans make are uniquely labeled as "language" by you or some others, but that is a lame argument. Since your points are mainly about "spoken" communication, then all "spoken" communication (sounds) by or between any species must be considered. Apparently you think that the sounds that non-human organisms make are not "spoken", are not communicative, and are therefor not "language".

You also mentioned hand gestures. Gestures, facial expressions, and many other non-"spoken" actions and positions are called 'body language'. Humans aren't the only ones who engage in that either. Far from it in fact.

By the way, do you really think that the "spoken" sounds (language) and the gestures/actions/positions (body language) that non-human organisms use are not complex? 'Complexity' is a matter of opinion but it can easily be said that the 'languages' used by many non-human organisms are too complex for humans to understand.

And what do you think of communicative sounds that are made, and understood, by non-human organisms that are not produced from their mouth?

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P.S. I tried a lot of things to be able to post my response at Panda's Thumb but nothing worked. Maybe they don't want to hear from me. :)