On Sat, May 15, 2004 at 11:45:22AM -0700, Philip Hart wrote: > A human language is a system of remarkable complexity. To come to know a > human language would be an extraordinary intellectual achievement for a > creature not specifically designed to accomplish this task. A normal child > acquires this knowledge on relatively slight exposure and without specific > training All these points are rather disputed in cognitive science. Non-slight exposure; motherese at least is some sort of training; and orangutans, chimps, bonobos, dolphins, and African Grey parrots all seem capable of learning at least a primitve language, not just that word X means object or action Y but that word order matters, as well as understanding spoken English to some testable extent. I didn't mention gorillas because I haven't read strong stuff about gorillas; there's Koko, but also dispute about Koko, and I simply don't know either way. My personal bet is that elephants could also achieve the same level of 'language', not to mention various other species of cetacean not as easy to work with. > It would surprising indeed if we were to find that the principles > governing [linguistic] phenomena are operative in other cognitive systems, One can argue that linguistic phenomena being entirely unique to humans, without basis in other animals, would be the more surprising result; evolution extending features already present is generally more plausible than invention de novo, though of course at some point invention does have to occur. It suddenly occurs to me that the Grey parrot results mean jhereg intelligence isn't as implausible as it might first seem. Not that parrots are human level, the way Loiosh is, but they can talk a bit. -xx- Damien X-)