[HN Gopher] Language was born in the hands (2022)
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Language was born in the hands (2022)
Author : keepamovin
Score : 49 points
Date : 2023-09-29 08:47 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (cosmosmagazine.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (cosmosmagazine.com)
| fmajid wrote:
| So how does this explain how whales, dolphins or parrots have
| language despite no hands?
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| It's stretch to call what any of them have a "language".
| tlavoie wrote:
| I think that your statement is more of a stretch, than the
| idea that quite intelligent, social creatures aren't using a
| language that we simply don't understand.
|
| I'd love to know what the local ravens are saying to each
| other; there is quite the variety of calls, and quite
| situational.
| og_kalu wrote:
| We have known for decades now that bottlenose dolphins
| understand language, and I mean the regularities that
| distinguish it from ordinary communication because we tested
| them with an artificially constructed one. And I mean tested
| comprehension rather than production. Lot easier to write off
| results of the latter.
|
| The idea then that these highly social animals have the
| ability to understand an artificially constructed language
| but don't use one naturally is _highly_ suspect. Especially
| when everything we can observe indicates it. https://www.scie
| ncedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/001002...
|
| "Comprehension, at levels far above chance, was shown for all
| of the sentence forms and sentence meanings that could be
| generated by the lexicon and the set of syntactic rules, and
| included the understanding of: (a) lexically novel sentences;
| (b) structurally novel sentences; (c) semantically reversible
| sentences that expressed relationships between objects; (d)
| sentences in which changes in modifier position changed
| sentence meaning; and (e) conjoined sentences (Phoenix).
| Additional abilities demonstrated included a broad and
| immediate generalization of the lexical items to different
| exemplars of objects; an ability to modulate the form of
| response to given action words, in order to apply the action
| appropriately to new objects, to different object attributes,
| or to different object locations; an ability to carry out
| instructions correctly despite changes in the context or
| location in which a sentence was given, or in the trainer
| providing the instructions; an ability to distinguish between
| different relational concepts; an ability to respond
| correctly to sentences given with no objects present in the
| tank until 30 seconds after the instruction was given
| (displacement tests); and an ability to report correctly that
| the particular object designated in a sentence was in fact
| not present in the tank, although all other objects were
| (Akeakamai).
|
| ......
|
| The comprehension approach used was a radical departure from
| the emphasis on language production in studies of the
| linguistic abilities of apes; the result obtained offer the
| first convincing evidence of the ability of animals to
| process both semantic and syntactic features of sentences. "
| gizmo686 wrote:
| It doesn't attempt to. To the extent that
| whales/dolphins/parrots have language, it evolved independently
| from human language. There is no particular reason to assume it
| evolved along the same path.
| webnrrd2k wrote:
| Good point about dolphins ans whales, but, if you've ever
| watched parrots, they have feet and a beak/tongue that can
| grasp and manipulate in a way that's analogous to human hands.
| thfuran wrote:
| The same way it explains the unification of quantum mechanics
| and general relativity.
| underlipton wrote:
| My layman's take is that TFA is probably wrong and that
| language started with song. Gestures are probably the origin of
| _communication_ (see also: speakers of non-mutually-
| intelligible languages tend to instinctively make gestures,
| often created on-the-fly to mimic some intended meaning or
| desire), but _language_ is different. Meaning in language is
| encoded in a mutually-intelligible format that is passed down
| memetically rather than genetically (which is why you see
| different "accents" in genetically-similar but geographically-
| separated populations in all of the aforementioned species). We
| instinctively recognize the resemblance between a given gesture
| and the object or action it's mimicking, but the meaning of
| language (like the connotation of particular elements of song,
| like note progression, which again varies between cultures) has
| to be acquired.
|
| Again, speaking out of my a*. Feel free to tear apart.
| [deleted]
| hadlock wrote:
| Was this written by someone without kids? In early childhood
| development pointing at items is referred to as "shared
| thinking". If a lion is charging at you in the jungle and you
| point at it the shared thought is "danger! He's coming to eat
| us!" or general concept.
|
| Alternatively if you're playing with your 8 month old nephew and
| point at the red ball, he'll grab it and give it to you. If you
| wait four more months and say "ball" he'll do the same thing.
| Both approaches work but pointing with your hands comes much,
| much earlier in the development process.
| garba_dlm wrote:
| another perspective to the shared thinking is that if a lion is
| charging at you in the jungle, there very first thing isn't
| conceptual; it's just fear which will immediately coordinate
| any mammals in the group to run or prepare to fight.
|
| I say this because I know some dogs are able to learn the ball
| thing too, oh and the fear thing is part of how i communicate
| with my dog.
| thfuran wrote:
| So should we expect that human ancestors had fragile, unfused
| skulls and no ability to move themselves around?
| drekipus wrote:
| Probably, when they were very little
| Borrible wrote:
| There was a time when "grasping" something was a literal thing.
| Strangely enough, however, I only became aware of this when I
| studied Hegel and some even more obscure texts from Friedrich
| Engels about Darwin and the importance of the hand for human
| evolution.Probably his 'Dialectics of Nature'.
| [deleted]
| jonahbenton wrote:
| Reminds me of the most interesting (to me) of the Huberman Lab
| episodes I listened to, the one with Dr Erich Jarvis, at
| Rockefeller, about speech, language and movement eg dance. The
| description doesn't do the content justice. Fully mind blowing.
| drekipus wrote:
| Interesting anacdote, my wife is into teaching our 1 year old
| sign language. Many words and phrases come through much faster
| than they do verbally. Words for "finished" "more" "water" etc.
|
| Really help in figuring out what she wants. And she squeals with
| delight when she feels understood.
| 28304283409234 wrote:
| "Clan of the Cavebear"? This is not a new theory.
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