I don't think the result is by any means obvious. All that seems obvious to me is that the dolphins appear to have unique calls to which they respond in kind. To determine if this functions as a name I'd like to see how the other dolphins react (under controlled conditions). If I yell "Frank!" and some guy yells "Frank!" back, I don't know what that means. But if I yell "Frank!" and a bunch of people turn and look at the guy, I have reason to think it's an identifier. For me the gold standard would be for Dolphin #2 to make Dolphin #1's call, and for Dolphin #3 to swim to/look at/otherwise react to Dolphin #1. Failing that, having Dolphin #3 react similarly to a recording of Dolphin #1's call would at least be suggestive. But having Dolphin #1 copy its own recording... I don't know what to conclude. Charles Greathouse Analyst/Programmer Case Western Reserve University On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 11:15 AM, Warren D Smith <warren.wds@gmail.com>wrote:
From: Tom Duff <td@pixar.com> http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=5453
On Tue, 23 Jul 2013, Warren D Smith wrote:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jul/22/bottlenose-dolphins-names-...
--I think that language log guy (G.K.Pullum) is complaining way too much, devoting great effort to attack a claim that was not made. The dolphin finding seems valid to me, no matter how much he whines about it, and it does not say (nor far as I could see was it trying to) that dolphins have human-like language. It indicates that they have a useful functionality of indicating to each other who is located where.
Pullum completely fails to comprehend that that would be very useful functionality for a herd of dolphins, instead wondering why if anybody shouted out "G.K. Pullum" in the street he would respond "G.K.Pullum" -- he sees no reason, therefore the whole thing is "obviously spurious." No, it is "obviously correct" (unless simply fraudulent) and interesting, and a simple and reproducible experiment (and Pullum seems to me to be a pompous idiot), and furthermore it might cast light on the beginnings of actual human language since, e.g, such a functionality could have started the whole ball rolling on that. (Indeed, we might ask: when, in human history, did "names" first appear? Probably unanswerable.)
Incidentally, other animals also have communication abilities in some ways resembling language, for example honeybees use a dance-based sign language which has been decoded using video and artificial bee-robots, and is extremely useful for them. The Australian stingless bees however do not do that and may communicate in a quite different manner (olfactory?).
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