Thomas_More
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Book review.
” The Voices of Nature also deals with the thorny question of whether animals have language. I explain that there are two sides to this question. Firstly, whether animals can express something other than their current emotion by controlling what they produce—to determine whether animal acoustic communications contain organizational rules similar to those of human language (syllables, words, syntax, etc.). Based on the scientific work of the last 40 years, I defend the idea that we can describe an animal’s acoustic communication as a “language,” because it’s a handy term to use to summarize a system in which an individual sender produces an information-carrying sound signal, but there are as many languages as there are animal species, each is in its own world.
” Biological evolution is the thread that connects us all, human and nonhuman animals alike, and discovering animal languages is a great way to realize just how interconnected we all are on this planet.”
You see from the articles that i am far from alone in my “loose” use of the word language.
I don’t know enough about fishes to refute you, but i am sure ethologists have written something here too.So you too, BJ, define language as solely verbal in the sense of human spoken language. But we see marine life has language, including fish, which the above article on octopuses makes clear.
Presumably, you reject the term “body language” then.
I’d agree that telling someone to f*** off is not an act in the same way as shooting them is, but it is more than “just a sound” and conveys a strong message of hatred and contempt.
I will admit it were better had i written “All SOCIAL beings have language”, but that is not strictly true, since solitary animals also require language for communication with each other upon meeting, and also with other species as necessary. Their body language (and/or vocal) has reason and emotion behind it. A fire alarm has neither, but merely an inanimate mechanical and artificial effect that is constructed by an animal for a specific purpose. It is not a living response.
Is not the communicating of emotions also language?
Even humans among themselves speak of body language.
And other animals also vocalise.
Their communication is language, which brings me back to the fact that your interpretation of the word is limited to the verbal.Use of the word language beyond the human ape:
Octopuses.
If language is communication, then it is applicable beyond the human ape alone.
