Is language unique to humans?(bbc.com)
bbc.com
Is language unique to humans?
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121016-is-language-unique-to-humans
39 comments
Yeah, it seems BBC Worldwide is available for free in every country on Earth, except Britain. I'm not sure in whose head this makes any kind of sense.
Sounds like some sort of Vogon logic.
Maybe BBC stuff is required to be free and ad-free for UK residents because UK residents pay for it in taxes. This is targeted at non-Uk people in order to make money with ads. So, it can't be shown in the UK. just a theory.
Maybe BBC stuff is required to be free and ad-free for UK residents because UK residents pay for it in taxes. This is targeted at non-Uk people in order to make money with ads. So, it can't be shown in the UK. just a theory.
I googled this and, wouldn't you know, a thread on HN came up! http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4110445
A workaround, from the author no less!
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pt&tl...
https://plus.google.com/u/0/114046998698228319586/posts/GpH9...
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pt&tl...
https://plus.google.com/u/0/114046998698228319586/posts/GpH9...
Proving, yet again, that any form of "DRM" or "Copyright" hurts more creators than it helps.
To make it even better, I see that message from work where I simultaneously can't watch iPlayer because then the BBC think I'm coming from outside the UK. Goodness knows how they manage that...
I feel like, having paid them £145, they could make it available to me anyway - it's hardly going to affect their bottom line to do so.
I feel like, having paid them £145, they could make it available to me anyway - it's hardly going to affect their bottom line to do so.
Are arbitrary and ridiculous restrictions on language unique to humans?
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.
I've found this part most interesting. I wonder if it's just the general pattern matching at work or something more.
You can read an interesting argument for that in On Intelligence:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Intelligence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Intelligence
I can't find the reference anymore, but there is a body of research which takes human motion and extracts a language from it including grammar, dialog acts, words, phonemes.
The possibilities of the video/body movement equivalent of speech recognition would open up a massive, incredibly interesting new dataset to wrangle.
The possibilities of the video/body movement equivalent of speech recognition would open up a massive, incredibly interesting new dataset to wrangle.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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!)
I find this interesting but I'm not sure I fully understand. Could you give an example? (Hypothetical is fine!)
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.
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.
> 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 !
too bad, it sounds interesting !
When Alex unexpectedly passed away after only thirty-one years of life, his last words to his dearest friend were, "You be good. See you tomorrow. I love you." A touching sentiment indeed, but all the more impressive because Alex was an African Grey Parrot. Over the course of thirty years of work between psychologist Irene Pepperberg and Alex, purchased from a Chicago pet store at one year of age, the parrot amassed a vocabulary of some 150 words. According to one report, he was able to recognize fifty different objects, could count quantities up to six, and could distinguish among seven colours and five shapes. He also understood the ideas of "bigger" and "smaller", and "same" and "different".
Alex isn’t the only non-human to display such talents. Kanzi is a 31-year-old male bonobo who lives in a small social group with others of his species at the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa. Bonobos, together with chimpanzees, are our closest living relatives. After years of working with primatologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Kanzi can now understand several thousand words, and can communicate using a kind of keyboard that contains around 400 visual symbols called lexigrams.
Then there's Rico, a border collie who knows the labels of around 200 different items, and can retrieve them on command. Compared to Alex and Kanzi, this might not seem particularly impressive or interesting. However, Rico can learn the label of an item that he's never seen before after only hearing the word once. If there are 20 items in front of him, 19 of which he already knows the labels for, and he is instructed to retrieve an item using a word he had never heard before, Rico can infer that the unfamiliar item matches with the unfamiliar word. Weeks later, he still remembers the pairing. This process of word-learning, called fast-mapping, is identical to the process through which young children learn new words.
Not to be outdone by the feathered or furry, there’s the female Atlantic bottlenose dolphins Akeakamai and Phoenix who lived at the Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory in Honolulu, Hawaii. A famous paper by marine biologist Louis Herman and colleagues in 1984 described Akeakamai and Phoenix's abilities to understand sentences in visual or acoustic artificial languages.
The researchers gave the dolphins instructions constructed entirely of familiar words, but in various combinations that would only be understood by knowing the grammar of the sentences, not just the vocabulary. For example, "Phoenix Akeakamai Over" was an instruction for Phoenix to swim to Akeakamai and jump over her, while "Akeakamai Surfboard Fetch Speaker" instructed Akeakamai to get the surfboard and bring it to the speaker. In each case the dolphin had to interpret the verb "over" or "fetch" according to the noun: did "fetch" apply to the surfboard or to the speaker, for instance?
Language barrier
Primates, birds, cetaceans, dogs and other species have proven able, through extensive training, to understand human words and simple sentences. And as Ed Yong explained, in some exceptional cases, such as Kanzi and Alex, they've even been able to engage in two-way communication with humans.
However, language is more than a process through which meaning is attached to words or short sentences. Language might be described as the ability to take a finite set of elements (such as words), and using a set of rules (grammar and syntax) to create infinite combinations, each of which is comprehensible. Given this definition, it is perhaps not surprising then that cognitive psychologists sometimes speak of a "grammar of action".
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.
What is language, then, if it can describe the way we process actions as well as the way we manipulate words? Understand from this perspective, language is not a method of communication, per se, but a rather method of computation. Other animals clearly communicate with one another, sometimes in fairly elaborate ways. Whale sing, monkeys howl, birds chirp. Lizards bob their heads up and down to communicate, and some squid do it by regulating the colouration of their skin cells. But none of these processes can be explained by language.
What makes human language unique is not that it allows us to communicate with each other, but that it allows us to do so with infinite variety. A monkey can scream to warn its troopmates of an approaching predator, or alert them to a cache of tasty food, but it can't communicate something like "doesn't that hawk have a funny looking beak?" or "with a little salt, this fig would taste divine". It certainly can't create nonsensical yet understandable sentences like “Colourless green ideas sleep furiously”.
No, only humans can utter that sort of grammatical nonsense.
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/09/arts/a-thinking-bird-or-ju... http://www.greatapetrust.org/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRM7vTrIIis http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtful-animal/2010/0... http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/00100277849... http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120322-will-we-ever-talk-t... http://s-f-walker.org.uk/pubsebooks/pdfs/The_Problem_of_Seri... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorless_green_ideas_sleep_fur...
Alex isn’t the only non-human to display such talents. Kanzi is a 31-year-old male bonobo who lives in a small social group with others of his species at the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa. Bonobos, together with chimpanzees, are our closest living relatives. After years of working with primatologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Kanzi can now understand several thousand words, and can communicate using a kind of keyboard that contains around 400 visual symbols called lexigrams.
Then there's Rico, a border collie who knows the labels of around 200 different items, and can retrieve them on command. Compared to Alex and Kanzi, this might not seem particularly impressive or interesting. However, Rico can learn the label of an item that he's never seen before after only hearing the word once. If there are 20 items in front of him, 19 of which he already knows the labels for, and he is instructed to retrieve an item using a word he had never heard before, Rico can infer that the unfamiliar item matches with the unfamiliar word. Weeks later, he still remembers the pairing. This process of word-learning, called fast-mapping, is identical to the process through which young children learn new words.
Not to be outdone by the feathered or furry, there’s the female Atlantic bottlenose dolphins Akeakamai and Phoenix who lived at the Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory in Honolulu, Hawaii. A famous paper by marine biologist Louis Herman and colleagues in 1984 described Akeakamai and Phoenix's abilities to understand sentences in visual or acoustic artificial languages.
The researchers gave the dolphins instructions constructed entirely of familiar words, but in various combinations that would only be understood by knowing the grammar of the sentences, not just the vocabulary. For example, "Phoenix Akeakamai Over" was an instruction for Phoenix to swim to Akeakamai and jump over her, while "Akeakamai Surfboard Fetch Speaker" instructed Akeakamai to get the surfboard and bring it to the speaker. In each case the dolphin had to interpret the verb "over" or "fetch" according to the noun: did "fetch" apply to the surfboard or to the speaker, for instance?
Language barrier
Primates, birds, cetaceans, dogs and other species have proven able, through extensive training, to understand human words and simple sentences. And as Ed Yong explained, in some exceptional cases, such as Kanzi and Alex, they've even been able to engage in two-way communication with humans.
However, language is more than a process through which meaning is attached to words or short sentences. Language might be described as the ability to take a finite set of elements (such as words), and using a set of rules (grammar and syntax) to create infinite combinations, each of which is comprehensible. Given this definition, it is perhaps not surprising then that cognitive psychologists sometimes speak of a "grammar of action".
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.
What is language, then, if it can describe the way we process actions as well as the way we manipulate words? Understand from this perspective, language is not a method of communication, per se, but a rather method of computation. Other animals clearly communicate with one another, sometimes in fairly elaborate ways. Whale sing, monkeys howl, birds chirp. Lizards bob their heads up and down to communicate, and some squid do it by regulating the colouration of their skin cells. But none of these processes can be explained by language.
What makes human language unique is not that it allows us to communicate with each other, but that it allows us to do so with infinite variety. A monkey can scream to warn its troopmates of an approaching predator, or alert them to a cache of tasty food, but it can't communicate something like "doesn't that hawk have a funny looking beak?" or "with a little salt, this fig would taste divine". It certainly can't create nonsensical yet understandable sentences like “Colourless green ideas sleep furiously”.
No, only humans can utter that sort of grammatical nonsense.
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/09/arts/a-thinking-bird-or-ju... http://www.greatapetrust.org/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRM7vTrIIis http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtful-animal/2010/0... http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/00100277849... http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120322-will-we-ever-talk-t... http://s-f-walker.org.uk/pubsebooks/pdfs/The_Problem_of_Seri... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorless_green_ideas_sleep_fur...
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)
-) 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)
Thanks, I'll give that a try.
Otherwise, web2pdfconvert.com or an email to [email protected] with the URL as content helps a lot :)
Otherwise, web2pdfconvert.com or an email to [email protected] with the URL as content helps a lot :)
printfriendly.com too offers pdf export of simpler refformated css, free.
[deleted]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
[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
Koko the Gorilla once ripped a sink off a wall. When asked about it, she signed the cat did it. To me this shows a certain amount of thought and understanding, maybe as much as a three or four year old human.
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.
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.
Related, interesting questions: is language unique to thought? Is thought possible without words?
Yes it is. Example - sometimes people are "tongue-tied" - they know what they want to say, but can't remember the word for that.
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?
What's the difference between "feeling/intuition/primordial emotional concept" and thought for those who aren't dualists?
If you have some form of aphasia it may be hard for you to find the words you need to say, but you can still choose and reason about what you're thinking about. You're able to conceptualise, you just can't put the right words to the right concepts. It's definitely far more than a feeling or intuition.
As always - everything depends on definitions :)
In my opinion feelings(probably) and concepts(for sure) are subsets of thoughts. But I'm not native English speaker, and this is subjective in my language too, so we can argue about that.
In my opinion feelings(probably) and concepts(for sure) are subsets of thoughts. But I'm not native English speaker, and this is subjective in my language too, so we can argue about that.
This is a huge debate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
I'd probably agree with the weak version that language does influence thought, although it does not control it totally.
If you're asking in terms of all-or-nothing, then I'd have to say yes. Animals think without words.
If you're asking in terms of all-or-nothing, then I'd have to say yes. Animals think without words.
Another good article about ant communication:
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/retrieve/pii/S0960982206...
And if you believe on: http://quran.com/27/18-19
And if you believe on: http://quran.com/27/18-19
I'm certain that Programming Languages are! :)
What the fuck? I mean what reason is there to actively prevent us seeing free content?