

Is language unique to humans?  - dn2k
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121016-is-language-unique-to-humans

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antihero
_"We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our
international service and is not funded by the licence fee. It is run
commercially by BBC Worldwide, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BBC, the
profits made from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new
BBC programmes. You can find out more about BBC Worldwide and its digital
activities at www.bbcworldwide.com."_

What the fuck? I mean what reason is there to _actively prevent_ us seeing
free content?

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5h
A workaround, from the author no less!

[http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pt&tl...](http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pt&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Ffuture%2Fstory%2F20121016-is-
language-unique-to-humans)

[https://plus.google.com/u/0/114046998698228319586/posts/GpH9...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/114046998698228319586/posts/GpH9ETaQSD5)

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bediger4000
Proving, yet again, that any form of "DRM" or "Copyright" hurts more creators
than it helps.

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yread
_Like sentences, the catalogue of human actions is infinite. We stretch, bend,
and kick. We build bridges and prepare meals. We perform an endless variety of
dance routines. We make paper airplanes. A complex action, like hammering a
nail, can be broken down into its constituent actions – grasping, striking,
reaching – just as a sentence can be broken into its units – nouns, verbs,
adjectives. In 1951, cognitive psychologist Karl Lashley proposed a link
between language and action. "Not only speech,” he wrote, “but all skilled
acts seem to involve the same problems of serial ordering, even down to the
temporal coordination of muscular contractions in such a movement as reaching
and grasping." Just as a stream of speech does not contain explicit pauses
between words, fluid actions like nail hammering do not contain breaks between
their components. Yet humans effortlessly parse speech streams and action
sequences into their parts._

I've found this part most interesting. I wonder if it's just the general
pattern matching at work or something more.

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jonsen
You can read an interesting argument for that in On Intelligence:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Intelligence>

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scotty79
I think that the language is actually the reason why we have such big brains.
If speaking was just a bit harder we couldn't do it.

When you rough up brain a little bit during surgery speech problems is the
first thing to expect even if you never touched anything near speech centers.
Even when you are just tired speech is one of the first things that get
affected.

Even perfectly healthy well rested average person is awful at speaking. We are
not usually aware of that because we don't pay the close attention to all
little flaws.

When I observed carefully my partner after she had craniotomy to spot any
signs of any possible post surgery complications I stared noticing how much
other people mess up their talk.

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beagle3
I don't disagree speech is hard, but _everything_ gets messed up when you are
tired or recovering, e.g. eye hand coordination. It's just that its easier to
spot it when speech is less than perfect, then when coordination is less than
perfect.

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scotty79
I agree that a lot of things are messed up when you are tired or recovering
but after brain surgery she was in perfect condition except functions located
it the region of the brain that was operated on and her speech. After all the
youtube videos I watched to prepare myself for this I came to believe that
impaired speech is one of the most common side effects of any brain surgery.

Anyway, my point is that even people in perfect condition have very hard time
speaking. Even if you are well rested, healthy and calm you and the people you
know mess up a lot more words than you think.

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motters
I think the answer is no, and that the main difference between human language
and other languages is its grammatical structure.

The languages of other creatures seem to be context free, or just regular
expressions of the type "if your hear sound X replace that with concept or
behavior Y". Human language is a lot more generative and context dependent,
allowing nested or recursive structures. A Turing Complete language allows
arbitrary types of machines to be supported within the culture. Of course in
practice these machines are never completely arbitrary, since there are plenty
of biological constraints.

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CKKim
> The languages of other creatures seem to be context free, or just regular
> expressions of the type "if your hear sound X replace that with concept or
> behavior Y".

I find this interesting but I'm not sure I fully understand. Could you give an
example? (Hypothetical is fine!)

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netcan
Bees communicate a remarkable amount of accurate info about the amount of food
available at a particular source & where that source is. The other bees
immediately respond by going there, in appropriate numbers to get it. I don't
think people really understand exactly how all this works, but the assumption
is that it's probably pretty mechanical. IE, the same way that the tasty
sensation maps directly to your swallow action, dancing maps to a bee's "go
that way" action.

I think that this is that this is just an assumption based on bees' small
brains. We don't really know if how fundamental the difference between bee
dance understanding and human language understanding. We don't really know the
mechanics of either.

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wazari972
> We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our
> international service and is not funded by the licence fee.

too bad, it sounds interesting !

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ari_elle
As you might run into restrictions like these on a regular basis, let me point
out some ways to easily surpass them.

-) For Firefox: _Modify Headers_

-) For Chromium/Chrome: _Header Hackers_

I am accessing this site (from Europe) without problems through Firefox (and i
activated all scripts temporarily to make sure it's not a blocked script
that's "blocking the block" from appearing)

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wazari972
Thanks, I'll give that a try.

Otherwise, web2pdfconvert.com or an email to submit@web2pdfconvert.com with
the URL as content helps a lot :)

~~~
agumonkey
printfriendly.com too offers pdf export of simpler refformated css, free.

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6ren
Other animals have much in common with us: able to navigate their environment,
recognize specific objects etc, they have emotions of fear, anger, affection.
And they have some problem-solving ability.

They also have a lot less brain hardware than us - even chimpanzee brains are
smaller and are much less folded. So even if they could do what we do, they
couldn't do it as well as us.

But I think what is special about human intelligence and language is a
difference in kind. I'm thinking of the difference between regular grammars,
context free grammars, context sensitive grammars and turing equivalent
grammars (though the actually demarcation could be quite different).

I think it's possible for a creature, far less intelligent than us, to have
our level of sophistication in this sense. Unfortunately, without powerful
hardware to store all the entities and connections and relate them to the
world, it wouldn't help a creature to survive, so I can't see it evolving
naturally.

If you have very little silicon you're better off devoting it to hardwired
reactions, with a little configurability - and not even have recursion.

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ari_elle
I seriously doubt the capabilities of animals when it comes to language.

Sure they have a wide spectrum of gestures and facial expressions (of course
especially apes or gorillas, with which we share a great amount of our
genetics), but do they really understand?

Is the record of "Alex" the Grey Parrot impressive?

Yes, but don't forget that a qualified animal researcher and scientist made it
her life's project to teach this parrot.

I think that most animals just learn to loosely "say"/do things when it's
wanted from them, because of very loose connections and patterns they
recognize, not certainly as a way of deep emotional expression.

 _Maybe someone has Sources for Neurological Studies on this?_

Could in my opinion clarify a little bit, what these animals actually "think"
while issuing sign language gestures or while talking, therefore maybe
unraveling their real capabilities of understanding.

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Thomvis
Regarding Sources for Neurological Studies: this paper [1] by Michael Arbib
explores the neural and functional grounding of language skills in humans and
their ancestors.

[1] Michael A. Arbib, From monkey-like action recognition to human language:
An evolutionary framework for neurolinguistics, Behavioral and brain sciences
28, 2005, pp. 105-124. PDF: <http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Temp/arbib-
bbs.pdf>

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curiousdannii
Animals can without doubt use symbolic systems, whether the sounds they
naturally make, or the systems researchers teach them. But symbolic systems
are not languages.

Symbolic systems can work because both communicating parties will share the
system. But an important feature of language is that it can be used to
communicate ideas which are not shared - you can communicate something that
the listener has never heard before, and in fact, you can communicate
something which no one has ever even thought before (well assuming that's
actually possible.)

One thing to show that these symbolic systems were languages would be to teach
the meaning of a new symbol to these animals using only the existing symbols.
I don't know if these researchers have tried, but I don't expect that it will
be possible to. Language is the probably the defining feature of humanity.

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Arjuna
Related, interesting questions: is language unique to thought? Is thought
possible without words?

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ajuc
Yes it is. Example - sometimes people are "tongue-tied" - they know what they
want to say, but can't remember the word for that.

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gameshot911
Is that really a "thought" though, or is it just a
feeling/intuition/primordial emotional concept up until the point that it can
be congealed into words?

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pessimizer
What's the difference between "feeling/intuition/primordial emotional concept"
and thought for those who aren't dualists?

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GNUmaro
Another good article about ant communication: [http://www.cell.com/current-
biology/retrieve/pii/S0960982206...](http://www.cell.com/current-
biology/retrieve/pii/S0960982206018343)

And if you believe on: <http://quran.com/27/18-19>

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arjunbajaj
I'm certain that Programming Languages are! :)

