Chimpsky was a joke aimed towards Noam Chomsky by Herbert "Herb" Terrace, because Chomsky said categorically that animals couldn't grasp grammar concepts like humans and Terrace was determined to prove Chomsky wrong. And it backfired. Robert Sapolsky spent a few weeks with Nim Chimpsky somewhere around 1980, during one of his internships, if I'm correct. You may check by watching one of his Stanford lectures about language, hosted on UA-cam. He also talks about Koko the gorilla and other apes.
I keep seeing people reference this in the comments. Could someone elaborate? Or at least tell me where to find more info.... if it's, perhaps, not appropriate to talk about in this venue...
@@newq but in short, experiments into whether dolphins could be taught to speak English included copious amounts of LSD, giving daily handjobs to Dolphins, and a Dolphin committing suicide.
@@newq I suggest looking up the Margaret Howe Dolphin Experiment (I think that's the right name for it). I think that's the experiment they're referencing. But be warned: it's not just weird, it's awful.
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So many “animal speech” things have some sort of questionable morals behind them, that I’m honestly happy to see Clever Hans really was clever, just not in the way people thought. The fact that the trainer too had no idea what was going on is amazing! “Clever Hans effect” feels like quite a good term: it gives the animals respect for what they _can_ do while still pointing out that _it’s not human language._
If you ever tried German lessons on Duolingo, there's a recurrent character in the texts whose name is Hans. Every time I read "Tut mir leid, Hans." I saw a sad horse face on my mind.
I remember reading that scientists had claimed Washoe and Kanzi learned "sign language," but any signer must have been pretty disappointed to witness their language had been downgraded to an ungrammatical game of gestural guesswork. It'd be like teaching an to elephant draw Chinese characters to signify some things in its environment and saying "Look, we taught Dumbo Chinese."
I don't think Alex was a Clever Hans. He didn't make complex sentences, but it was more to explore what HE thought and HOW he learned, since parrots can already speak and are already social. The data gained from him has helped teach autistic kids. He also did it with anyone. We also know they're as smart as a 5 year old. The goal with Alex was never to get him to write Shakespeare, but to see if he can think.
Most animals are quite articulate, without language, in communicating their wants. I don't think most animal lovers want more than that. It's exhausting spending time with a typical 5 year old. Can you imagine your dog pestering you relentlessly with typical 5 y.o.questions, like how deep is the ocean, what makes it snow, or impressing you with the fascinating bits of trivia they learned that day? I'm thankful my dog only wants an off leash outing or a bone, and not to bore me with why Frozen is such a good movie.
A lot of linguists don't understand this exact aspect of research with non-human animals that have been trained to communicate using symbols or more human-/language-like strategies. For example, the scientists that worked with Kanzi (I know one of them) have been interested in learning whether, how, and to what degree he (and other apes) are capable of using symbolic means of communicating. That's it.
It feels like anthropomorphizing if we assume that animal language/communication would mirror human language in finer details and it's interesting to think how that alone makes this field of study difficult. It reminds me of "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" by Thomas Nagel i.e. It's impossible to understand the internal experience of an animal or even another human. :)
the 'chimps can talk' hogwash was still being taught in 1980-82 in my UK university psychology course. It was obvious to me that it was more full of holes than Swiss cheese, so I stumped off the the library to debunk it for myself. I was quite prepared to spend weeks on it, but it took me about two hours to find Petito & Seidenberg (1975), the sceptic 'review of reviews' of the literature up to that date. They were the grad students of Prof. Herbert Terrace, who first realised that the Clever Hans effect extended to chimps with a vengeance
@@EricJacobusOfficial I found a paper titled "Signing behavior in apes: A critical review" by Petito; Seidenberg (1979) at DOI 10.1016/0010-0277(79)90019-2 . Paywalled but easily accessible from "other means" like sci *cough* hub. Current working TLD of the aforementioned site is .ru
I interpreted this question as asking if animals have structure to their own languages (verbal or body language) similar to what we call grammar in human languages.
Without question. Communication is defined as an exchange of information, even if it is only one way, i.e. there can be a single sender and a single receiver. There does not have to be a back-and-forth flow of information. Obviously, animals communicate. Bees can give EXACT direction to a group of flowers and ants can describe tunnel conditions and outside weather. Hell, PLANTS even communicate with each other with chemicals. So yes, 100% animals, plants, and even bacteria communicate.
Just because we don't know their grammar, doesn't mean they don't have grammar. Now I won't say all animals have grammar, and a lot of communication doesn't need grammar, but to say they can't or don't have grammar is incorrect. Now, to say they can't understand/use human grammar structures is probably correct as we have fairly complex structures, and far more words than any animal has which further complicates learning grammar
An amazing video as always. And similarly, as always, watching one of your videos, no matter how long, when it ends it seems like it has been seconds, not minutes. Looking forward to the next one :)
I've gotta say, I have come across your channel one too many times on your various videos on human languages (starting with the old chinese and egyptian ones). But it is only after 2 full days of binging your videos when i decided to subscribe. The content is amazing, thank you.
I just have to say, the entire journey so far has been mildly frustrating to me with the Anthro-centrism and assuming that non-humans would communicate in any kind of human-like way. As a large fan of speculative xeno-biology so often times it feels people get wrapped up in assuming things would go the same way on other planets and biology as it would on Earth. Which isn't nessicarily true. Even among humans we are different levels and ways of communication that don't fall into "Grammar" so to speak. So I'm really looking forward to the next video to see what you've come up with. If two humans sometimes have radically different ways of thinking and communicating using roughly the same hardware, how can we be so arrogant to assume that other species talk in the same way. Great video as always ~
I think the anthro-centrism is appropriate here, since the question is specifically 'can animals grammar?' This is a great phrasing because it side-steps the unspoken assumptions about conciousness, 'civilizedness' and intelligence that humans associate with 'language'. Too often people seem to think that 'animals don't have language' implies all sort of things about their ability to perceive, understand or communicate. Of course animals have fascinating and complex communication system. We're animals and we do too. But other animals can't use human language just like I can't communicate from my anal scent gland.
~nod~ And as someone long involved in the Disability Rights movement, I've know that Deaf people (particularly those whose native language is a signed language) have long been infuriated/frustrated by the fascination with teach chimps and other apes sign... as if their native languages are less than fully human.
@@davidharrison7072That is true, but that doesn't take away from the original commenters point that whatever communication systems animals have, they could be radically different from our own. To answer the question whether animal have language, we first have to clarify what we mean by language, and if our idea of language is "speaking just like humans do", then the answer is obviously no. If they could do that, we could speak to them. So we change the question to "Can animals grammar", and our search becomes a lot more interesting - because the main component of grammar is not "speaking like humans do", it is having smaller combinable units that carry meaning ordered in a systematic law-like way, or something along those lines. It is very much not producing words with your mouth, or understanding them with your ears. If we do want to find non-human grammar out there, we have to consider that animals can produce meaning differently, and we will have to analyze their animal-specific meaning-making-systems to judge whether they qualify as grammar. Which might of course produce vague results, because our definition of grammar is strongly tied to human language; but that does not have to stop us from making interesting findings. I have been told recently that music also has grammar like structures, even though its function is arguably very different from that of language. So, overall, I do think that Anthropocentrism will only hold us back with this research topic.
Yep. We take a sample set of 1 (us humans) and expect any other living being to compare to that standard, which is ridiculous. Most beings have ways to communicate. That doesn't mean they're in any way comparable to the way we do.
Apollo does that to just play around with phonemes and mess with his owners on purpose (as parrots are wont to do). His job is to learn words and concepts rather than a grammar. Even with Alex, which is what inspired Apollo, he never used grammatical sentences. The most complex Alex got was "wanna go back" (he's done for the day, he would like to be put back in his cage for a break, thank you very much) and "what color am i?"
I'm still wainting for a video on the other missing romance languages since we had the African Romance video. Specially in Ilyria! Was this project fully abandoned? Or perhaps we could see more of it in the future?
To be clear, most human successes also can be called "tricks, often performed for treats" (4:50). "Commands, wants and needs" is the first level of communication... the beginnings of grammar, not evidence of its lack. However, yes, other than with great apes, it doesn't even make sense to TRY to teach them human thought processes. It's better to work with their existing thought process, so you have a good framework for what's feasible (for example, connected sequences will be more feasible for some species... others, not so much). I hooe my lack of good grammar isn't too distracting😂
I was reading The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker and he mentioned these cases and couple more and he explained the most effective criticisms against these ideas. Many other researcher were a lot less ethical, controlling acces to the animals and not keeping proper notes and observations.
Trying to learn the language of another species seems intimidating, even if it was humans dealing with aliens. Shouldn’t raise our hopes *too* high for animals.
There is a scholar in Japan who studies titmice, titmice have language he proved it. They talk more than monkeys. They mainly use six words: pipipi for hawk, jijiji for gather, tupii for stay close, jajaja for snake, tilili for hungry, pitupi for alert, and so on. We talk about these together. For example, jajaja pitupi means watch out for snakes.
@downsjmmyjones101 Yes, there is. There is an experimental video. He experimented with how titmice react to different sounds. When he made a "jajaja" sound and showed a branch, the titmice would approach the branch looking for the snake. This behavior is intended to locate the snake and inform their friends. However, when he made a "tupii" sound, the tits did not approach the branch at all.
Interestingly, there's a project collecting all of the gestures used for communication by non-human Great Apes. Chimps and Bonobos and gorillas and orangutans _do_ use a form of "sign language", but it's not a human one and it's rather simple in its grammar.
@@downsjmmyjones101 Here's why "complex grammar" is such a big deal: it's _productive._ When a feature of a language is described as, "productive," it means that it allows you to extend the language to brand new concepts that don't yet exist. As an example, I like to bring up the very productive German verb prefix, „zer-“. That prefix denotes connotations of, "…to the point of destruction." And it's not coincidence that the German verbs meaning, "to crush," "to smash," "to shatter," "to crush," "to disintegrate," and yes, "to destroy," all begin with the prefix, „zer-“. But you can put it onto other verbs. Consider „schneiden“, to cut. „zerschneiden“, then, would mean to cut into small pieces that there no way of reassembling. „kochen“==to cook or go boil. „zerkochen“ means to boil to death or to cook into inedibility. And you can append it onto "to sing": „zersingen“ == to sing so horribly, you've basically destroyed the song! The ability to use productive features of a language is something that, so far, appears to be uniquely human. And determining what separates us from other animals without being arrogant or presumptive is an important area of research.
@@drakep271 „zerscheißen“ would be the infinitive. Gotta conjugate those German verbs correctly! [„ich zerscheiße…“] Although you do need to be careful, because „zer-“ plus some verbs already have a meaning, one that doesn't exactly match what you'd expect. Like, for example: „zerbauen“==„zer-“+„bauen“ doesn't mean, "To build so badly it falls apart." It already exists and means, "To dismantle," i.e. the opposite of building something. So it's always worthwhile to check the Duden to see if Germans have already been slapping „zer-“ onto a verb and have given it a meaning of its own.
I'm always reminded of the Chinese Room thought experiment. Even if they could theoretically reproduce perfect English, that wouldn't necessarily mean they UNDERSTAND the language like we do.
I ran across a UA-cam channel that has lessons on how to talk to and with CATS. 😮 I'm no expert... But anecdotally I've been amazed at the responses (actions and verbal) of our cats. I've been a Coco fan since her first appearance on PBS BITD. There's a video on here that uses the word Ooftonium (I think) that says she absolutely 💯 could NOT communicate in sign language. I've never been able to watch it all. 😢
The problem is that the main humans who worked with her … all of them hearing … would interpret her signs using _homophones._ For example, using the sign for "bee" to mean "to be". _Which doesn't work in sign language, where "sounds like" isn't a concept._ And when deaf people tried to tell the researchers they were both using sign wrong and not teaching it to Coco correctly, they were ignored. I think Coco could communicate, just not to the extent but in the way that her handlers thought.
So, this is purely anecdotal and unfalsifiable but, my first cat actually made a sign language type thing in her own way. Of course there was only one sign. The gesture meant “I want to go outside.” And the gesture she used was pawing at the door knob as if to open it. Personally I find that she proves that some cats can comprehend very basic symbolic gestures. Of course this gesture was reinforced whenever she got let outside but that’s its own thing. The thing I am trying to say is that somehow she made a basic connection between an action humans did and what it achieved and thought to mimic that motion perhaps if only to see if it would also let her out. Then we reinforced the connection between the gesture and what it was meant to communicate by letting her out.
It's easy to confuse communication with language. Communication is a lot easier than you'd realize: horses and dogs in particular are very easy to communicate with, especially if they're well-trained. They can often understand commands and gestures of various types, and it's definitely possible to perceive a complex emotional reality in them. But that's not generally how we define language. I know my cat is happy if his tail is standing tall, much in the same way I know that someone is happy with me by how they act. We actually know quite a bit about housecats' methods of signalling their humans. But a smile isn't language, nor is it slow blinking. Language, and especially grammar, is about words and syntax. It's possible that cats have language, But honestly, what probably happened is that your cat knows how your door works, but has also realized it's easier to get you to work the mechanism, because door knobs are difficult for a cat leg to handle. Frankly, if that was the only "sign" you recall, you probably weren't very familiar with how cats communicate. There are a *lot* of signals that you can learn (some of which are frustratingly counter-intuitive, like staring being interpreted as hostility or challenge).
@@Duiker36 you have decent points. Keep in mind this was years ago. I have another cat who I’m also quite attuned to. The one bit of cat communication that I have known for a while is that if a cat’s tail is wagging they’re about done with you. I’m also aware of and use other ways cats communicate. I was just pointing out a very interesting form of communication that I now know I mistook as language. And even with that same cat we could communicate effectively beyond that gesture. And one more thing regarding cat communication. Regarding staring you are right that you shouldn’t hold eye contact for too long. But there is a relaxed form of staring and a threatening form of staring. If a cat’s eyes are relaxed while they’re staring at you that means in the broadest sense that they are not trying to communicate dominance. Of course you should break up eye contact and slow blink frequently when this happens.
I actually think AI could help decode animal grammar *strictly in the sense* that understanding how different computer models structure and map signals into grammar structures could give us more insight into how animals do it too.
I mean, if you start with the assumption that animals do it, it makes it a lot easier to fill in the gap with nonsense. That's how it goes when you start with a conclusion and then generate data to explain it.
@@Duiker36 I'm starting with the observation that many animals appear to be able to communicate and relay information that is more complex than mere call-and-response, and I hypothesize that they must have some underlying system of logic that they use to communicate, regardless of whether it makes sense as language to us.
When my wife mentions "bath" around our dog, he comes over to me because he knows what bath means. I say that, Because if she says treat, or "prize" he doesn't come over to me to save him. Instead, he turns around in circles for "yes" of sorts.
There was a super lengthy video that Soup Emporium made a few years back on Koko the Gorilla's (in)ability to sign. There was a *significant* portion of that video dedicated to the complexities of sign language (how deaf babies sign the same way hearing babies babble, deaf people who have strokes show similar impairments with signing the way hearing people have speech impediments, etc), and how the researchers attempting simian signing experiments basically took ASL signs and stapled them together with English grammar. In other words, the researchers themselves had no idea how sign language worked.
From my own experience talking to animals, I think too many humans get over analyitical in their thinking of animal communication. Animals do not usually dumb down their native languages for humans to understand, and need to be taken as a whole rather than a sum of parts, the same way adult human language or poetryvis used. Wild animals typically have better communication skills than domestic ones, and certain members of species seem to know local human langauges, especially in urban enviroments. Naturally, older members of animal species seem more adept at both their own langauge, and interpreting others. A controlled enviroment is not the wayvto learn animal communication. How readily would you be willing to open up to your captors? How well would you speak if you had never met any other humans or only a handful of other prisioners? In situations where your power is stripped, feining stupidity is incredibly helpful. Anyone whos worked a minimun wage job, or been part of a discriminated class of human will understand this tactic. Many wild animals will try to communicate with humans. think of times you may have seen an animal and it "looks like he is mad" or " looks like he is saying X" well, they most likely are.
@@downsjmmyjones101Were they ever allowed to? Chantek knew basic American sign language and understood how money works. His photo was even included in the university's year book. At age 9 he was incarcerated for 11 years, officially because he was accused of harassment but it's well-known that certain powerful figures in the university wanted him gone because they held religious beliefs about how animals' inability to use language is evidence that they have no soul. After he was eventually moved into a zoo, he referred to the other apes as "orange dogs", a description he invented himself. He repeatedly asked to be released so he could go back home. Anyone familiar with ASL could communicate with him. To deny he understood language would require denying that sign language is a language at all.
why would an animal who just wants something from their caretakers need to want to ask 'complex questions' or state 'complex declarative sentences' anyhow? Perhaps this disinclination is a cognitive limitation but is it a communicative one? I mean, if one simply wants a banana from that communication exchange, why grammar much beyond that?
It's not really complex questions, but questions full stop. AFAIK no ape has ever asked a genuine question. Only alex asked one question, once. Seeing as 4 year olds do nothing but ask questions all day, I suspect there is a deep difference
Ok but why is grammar the only thing were focusing on My cat says "wow" when he wants to be petted. He sats "aaaaam" when he wants "ham" (what we call wet food) why do we need grammar on top of vocabulary to acknowledge that animals can communicate to us and mean it?
And perhaps "can animals grammar" is the wrong question. Let's _not_ set human grammar as a "standard" with all failing to "meet" those human concepts of grammar as "non communication." That seems like an all too rigid conception of what it means to communicate. Removing ourselves from the equation and learning, interpreting, and applying other species meanings and conveyed information wpuld be a way to do this. Also, is "grammar" a necessary "benchmark," or does it just help _us_ as humans order the meanings of other animal communications for us to seemingly understand (or not)?
Thanks for saying so. I kept messing with it; values and waveforms looked right, but something felt off. Going to readjust this when I put it all together.
From a purely survival and evolutionary basis, I don't see any reason why animals would ever have any use for our human grammars/languages. Our languages/grammars are even now continuously evolving as they have the entire time that we humans have used them. The main ways I can think of that precise use of grammar & language is essential is when communicating technical/scientific things or things of a social/emotional/political nature(political not necessarily meaning of the government). I think Bonobos are the most like us socially, but many of the things they do commonly we now consider sex crimes. 😅
Which raises the obvious question of why humans developed human grammars/languages. Why couldn't we get by on basic signals like waving our arms or making strange mouth sounds? What made us different? There are plenty of tool-using animals, and plenty of socially-complex animals, so why don't they have language, if they don't?
@@Duiker36 Most animals don't have the vocal cords that humans do; even our nearest genetic relatives. Human have gotten by using basic hand signals for millenia and strange mouth sounds ARE language that a group of people has agreed upon to communicate amongst themselves. Africa has NEW languages being made all the time even now which might seem like that to some, but they're usually related to other existing languages in the region. Humans, eventually at least, like one upping one another and we like fighting for what another has access to. Animals also fight for territory, which has food or other resources, like us, but they've never evolved enough to make it as strategic as humans have(back to that continuous one upping each other part). The other part is we like to distance ourselves from other we're ignorant of by declaring that they are "Them" and not of "Us". That creates wars of theologies, ideals, interpretations of theologies(typically now seen amongst the Muslim peoples and even Christian peoples, e.g. Afghanistan & Ukrainian wars) , and civil wars. Many times all of the above. In short, humans are just the most societally complex creatures and have taken biological aspects from many other "lesser" lifeforms. That's why our communication is so complex. 😅
It's just so fundamentally wrongheaded to try to get another species to communicate on our terms, it's extreme anthropomorphism. Every species has its own method of communication that's perfectly suited to its needs, having evolved over millions of years. Of course it would be much more valuable to study animal communication on its own terms rather than ours.
@@downsjmmyjones101 Right, but that's still imposing a human construct on other species. They were trying to see if they could learn _human_ language, which the scientific community thankfully realized eventually was wrongheaded and ethically questionable.
@@downsjmmyjones101 I'm not an expert by any means, but as I understand it, people who research such things make a distinction between systems of communication in animal species vs language proper, which is an entirely human phenomenon. I think one of the real dividing lines is the ability to express thoughts about past, future, or hypothetical events through grammar.
@@valmarsiglia How are we supposed to tell if human language is unsuitable for animals or all language is unsuitable if we can't test a non-human language? What's the alternative course of action?
What about Koko, the gorilla who reportedly recognised over 2,000 spoken English words, and could communicate using 1,000 American Sign Language words?
Extremely questionable and largely considered equivalent to Nim in the greater scientific community. Not only does her trainer go to great lengths to perpetuate that she signs better and more complex language than she does, but actual native sign language speakers have written critiques about a huge portion of kokos sign language being actually incoherent, but creatively interpreted as valid signs anyways by 'researchers' and her caretaker who actually aren't very well versed in sign language. Her last goodbye and her time with Robin Williams are particularly elucidating. They really just make up whole cloth entire portions of what she 'apparently' is saying, or just constantly distract when she says absolutely nothing intelligible with her sign. And if you look deep enough, you start asking why Koko got so many new cats so often, and why her female trainers were encouraged to let her play with their nipples. Just incredibly questionable all around.
It's interesting that now we do have entities which can create coherent sentences, but they do not always do so logically. I asked ChatGPT if, given 3 women and 3 men on a desert island were able to without any external assistance, produce 3 babies within 11 months, how long it would take 2 women and no men to produce 1 baby. It's answer, in well-formatted LaTeX I might add, and without explaining it's assumptions, was to confidently declare that 2 women could produce a single baby in 3.67 months without the assistance of any men. An answer so obviously wrong that no human would even consider it. When asked to explain, it stated many of the complexities that allow for variance in the human gestational period, which would be fine, had it not neglected the core issues that the time is wildly shorter than the human gestation period, and conception without a male genetic donor or high tech lab equipment would be impossible regardless. That is, it is an entity which can speak in coherent sentences but for which common sense logical issues with meaning are only partially important. Issues that it itself is aware of but which it doesn't always consider.
In the thumbnail, why does the women with glasses on have eyebrows both inside the boundaries of the frames and in the area outside the area of the frames? It doesn't make sense.
Children quickly come to understand the rules of grammar and can use it regularly, even with novel or nonsense words. They can even develop grammar largely by themselves, as the famous case of the (Nicaraguan, i think?) school for the deaf showed. Animals have never been shown to understand how grammar works or be able to regularly use it.
I like the channel Billi speaks. She is a kitty that speaks. With those buttons that people get to communicate with pets. She's smart. And has a large vocabulary. No complex sentences, but. Well. I watch it because it's adorable. And it is. Also undeniably smart. But, for the sake of what was talked about in the video. Not grammar. Useful too. My friends cat is really good at telling her what she wants. But. Well. Billi is on another level on that.
Whether or not other species have, use, or can learn human language grammar is, to me, somewhat unnecessary and irrelevant. It's the wrong question. I'll remind here that while humans can "train" other species to respond to our commands (demands), there is yet to be an example of the exact reverse. It's so far a one-way communication. Other species have learned more about our communications and use of our communication forms to convey information to us, however. They have essentially learned rudimentary communication in a "foreign" (another species) language - something humans have not succeeded doing.
@downsjmmyjones101 No, they aren't communicating with animals at all. A human can track a lion's movements just as a lion can track a human's movements. That's covert observation, not communication. What's your point, exactly?
@downsjmmyjones101 Right, because what you described is part of tracking, reason irrelevant. Spraying scents or making sounds may attract attention, prompting another species to investigate. I rather much see this analogous to someone foolishly splashing around in a Florida river, attracting an alligator's notice. We know what comes next, and that's not communication, is it? None of that constitutes communication, where two parties are attempting to convey information to each other or from reach other.
@@EyeSeeThruYou Just because it's part of tracking doesn't mean it's not communication. Why do scents and calls attract attention? Do gators splash to communicate with each other?
instead of teaching english to animals you'd think that humans would be smart enough to learn the nonverbal cues that animals give to indicate their needs and expressions. The animals can pick up on cues, but we cant? cmon. I think bout this with button dogs whataboutbunny like just get to know your dog psychology and pay attention...tf
@@sweet_iris The reason people are trying to see if non-humans can learn language is because we want to see if we're the only ones capable of language.
Human language is human specific, other animals, if they have something that can be described as language, will have their own species specific system and it won't be like ours.
Ethics and experimental methodology aside... Nim Chimpsky is a fantastic name name for a chimp being taught to communicate
It's Chimpsky, but I agree.
@@MatthewTheWanderer you are correct ofc, I have edited my comment
Chimpsky was a joke aimed towards Noam Chomsky by Herbert "Herb" Terrace, because Chomsky said categorically that animals couldn't grasp grammar concepts like humans and Terrace was determined to prove Chomsky wrong.
And it backfired.
Robert Sapolsky spent a few weeks with Nim Chimpsky somewhere around 1980, during one of his internships, if I'm correct. You may check by watching one of his Stanford lectures about language, hosted on UA-cam. He also talks about Koko the gorilla and other apes.
>"It's dolphin experiments which, yes, did get weird"
understatement of the century
ofc
Thoughty2 did a video on one of them. Are you referring to something that perhaps?
I keep seeing people reference this in the comments. Could someone elaborate? Or at least tell me where to find more info.... if it's, perhaps, not appropriate to talk about in this venue...
@@newq but in short, experiments into whether dolphins could be taught to speak English included copious amounts of LSD, giving daily handjobs to Dolphins, and a Dolphin committing suicide.
@@newq I suggest looking up the Margaret Howe Dolphin Experiment (I think that's the right name for it). I think that's the experiment they're referencing. But be warned: it's not just weird, it's awful.
The one where we wrap up our background to animal grammars and pass on the tradition of debunking poor old Hans 🐴
Clever Hans was clever indeed, just not in the advertised way.
I just saw you make your own music for your videos. Do you maybe have a playlist available? I really like it!
I challenge you to take the Clozemaster 10 languages 10 questions each challenge. Pick any 10 languages video yourself taking the challenge and inspire us. (whether you have studied are familiar with or not). This is a fun opportunity to showcase your talent with a little bit of humility proving you too are human and still a language learner. You can put the flags of the 10 languages you choose for the challenge in both the thumbnail and the title and tag the video as #takingtheclozemaster 10 languages challenge. While also tagging the languages of the challenge. When choosing from a diverse variety of languages consider this, to include some of those you're familiar with, those that you are not, and those that you will later learn. Choosing to include a conlang like Interlingua and an ancient language like Latin will keep the challenge diverse while bringing recognition to these languages (you may surprise yourself). Consider getting a hold of Clozemaster they may be interested in sponsoring the video. We as a community of language Learners need a challenge that we can all appreciate and try together. To get the most out of the video challenge adjust the settings as follows: put the skills to listening, the question count to 10, and the mode to multiple choice. Then you can adjust the account to dark mode (as it's more attractive) and the default speed to 75% for better hearing the questions. Doing a dry run will ensure all the settings are correct. Keep a notepad by your side to keep track of the language scores. Before you end the video it would be nice if you encouraged other polyglots and language Learners to take up the challenge.
Buenas suerte
Carpe Diem
السلام عليكم
I am a little blown away by the amount of research that you do for all of your videos. The animations too! It's appreciated 🙂
Can we please get an ampersand video?
So many “animal speech” things have some sort of questionable morals behind them, that I’m honestly happy to see Clever Hans really was clever, just not in the way people thought. The fact that the trainer too had no idea what was going on is amazing!
“Clever Hans effect” feels like quite a good term: it gives the animals respect for what they _can_ do while still pointing out that _it’s not human language._
If you ever tried German lessons on Duolingo, there's a recurrent character in the texts whose name is Hans. Every time I read "Tut mir leid, Hans." I saw a sad horse face on my mind.
I'm not convinced the trainer didn't know
I remember reading that scientists had claimed Washoe and Kanzi learned "sign language," but any signer must have been pretty disappointed to witness their language had been downgraded to an ungrammatical game of gestural guesswork. It'd be like teaching an to elephant draw Chinese characters to signify some things in its environment and saying "Look, we taught Dumbo Chinese."
And Dumbo constantly gets the strokes backwards
Sure animals can grammar. Humans for instance are often extremely good at it.
Some of them. It's arguable for others, though :P
Sure animals? What are sure animals? Did you mean "Sure, animals can grammar."
what about unsure animals?
Exactly, humans are good at it. Just what I was thinking.
I don't think Alex was a Clever Hans. He didn't make complex sentences, but it was more to explore what HE thought and HOW he learned, since parrots can already speak and are already social. The data gained from him has helped teach autistic kids. He also did it with anyone. We also know they're as smart as a 5 year old. The goal with Alex was never to get him to write Shakespeare, but to see if he can think.
Most animals are quite articulate, without language, in communicating their wants. I don't think most animal lovers want more than that. It's exhausting spending time with a typical 5 year old. Can you imagine your dog pestering you relentlessly with typical 5 y.o.questions, like how deep is the ocean, what makes it snow, or impressing you with the fascinating bits of trivia they learned that day? I'm thankful my dog only wants an off leash outing or a bone, and not to bore me with why Frozen is such a good movie.
A lot of linguists don't understand this exact aspect of research with non-human animals that have been trained to communicate using symbols or more human-/language-like strategies. For example, the scientists that worked with Kanzi (I know one of them) have been interested in learning whether, how, and to what degree he (and other apes) are capable of using symbolic means of communicating. That's it.
It feels like anthropomorphizing if we assume that animal language/communication would mirror human language in finer details and it's interesting to think how that alone makes this field of study difficult. It reminds me of "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" by Thomas Nagel i.e. It's impossible to understand the internal experience of an animal or even another human. :)
the 'chimps can talk' hogwash was still being taught in 1980-82 in my UK university psychology course. It was obvious to me that it was more full of holes than Swiss cheese, so I stumped off the the library to debunk it for myself. I was quite prepared to spend weeks on it, but it took me about two hours to find Petito & Seidenberg (1975), the sceptic 'review of reviews' of the literature up to that date. They were the grad students of Prof. Herbert Terrace, who first realised that the Clever Hans effect extended to chimps with a vengeance
Do you happen to have a link to this paper? Not easy to find it online.
this may be close: Seidenberg, M.S., & Petitto, L.A. (1979). Signing behavior in apes: A critical review. Cognition, 7, 177-215. @@EricJacobusOfficial
@@EricJacobusOfficial I found a paper titled "Signing behavior in apes: A critical review" by Petito; Seidenberg (1979) at DOI 10.1016/0010-0277(79)90019-2 . Paywalled but easily accessible from "other means" like sci *cough* hub. Current working TLD of the aforementioned site is .ru
I interpreted this question as asking if animals have structure to their own languages (verbal or body language) similar to what we call grammar in human languages.
It sounds like your interpretation will be addressed in the next video. I'm curious too.
They can’t grammar, but they can communicate.
Well, some animals do structure their calls. E.g. the Carolina Chickadee shows a strict order to their calls. Is this not grammar?
no
@@BryanLu0 Yes. Grammar is any rule of a language's structure. That would definitely be grammar.
Without question. Communication is defined as an exchange of information, even if it is only one way, i.e. there can be a single sender and a single receiver. There does not have to be a back-and-forth flow of information. Obviously, animals communicate. Bees can give EXACT direction to a group of flowers and ants can describe tunnel conditions and outside weather. Hell, PLANTS even communicate with each other with chemicals. So yes, 100% animals, plants, and even bacteria communicate.
Just because we don't know their grammar, doesn't mean they don't have grammar. Now I won't say all animals have grammar, and a lot of communication doesn't need grammar, but to say they can't or don't have grammar is incorrect. Now, to say they can't understand/use human grammar structures is probably correct as we have fairly complex structures, and far more words than any animal has which further complicates learning grammar
An amazing video as always. And similarly, as always, watching one of your videos, no matter how long, when it ends it seems like it has been seconds, not minutes.
Looking forward to the next one :)
I watched this just now with my mother in the background and she said, so basically "Clever Hans effect" explains how your wife speaks Italian.
I need more context 😂
THAT DOES NOT COMPUTE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@@malegria9641his wife speaks Italian poorly, there I gave you context
I've gotta say, I have come across your channel one too many times on your various videos on human languages (starting with the old chinese and egyptian ones). But it is only after 2 full days of binging your videos when i decided to subscribe.
The content is amazing, thank you.
How did I instantly know what you meant when you mentioned dolphin experiments and said “yes they got weird”
I just have to say, the entire journey so far has been mildly frustrating to me with the Anthro-centrism and assuming that non-humans would communicate in any kind of human-like way. As a large fan of speculative xeno-biology so often times it feels people get wrapped up in assuming things would go the same way on other planets and biology as it would on Earth. Which isn't nessicarily true. Even among humans we are different levels and ways of communication that don't fall into "Grammar" so to speak. So I'm really looking forward to the next video to see what you've come up with. If two humans sometimes have radically different ways of thinking and communicating using roughly the same hardware, how can we be so arrogant to assume that other species talk in the same way. Great video as always ~
I think the anthro-centrism is appropriate here, since the question is specifically 'can animals grammar?' This is a great phrasing because it side-steps the unspoken assumptions about conciousness, 'civilizedness' and intelligence that humans associate with 'language'. Too often people seem to think that 'animals don't have language' implies all sort of things about their ability to perceive, understand or communicate. Of course animals have fascinating and complex communication system. We're animals and we do too. But other animals can't use human language just like I can't communicate from my anal scent gland.
~nod~ And as someone long involved in the Disability Rights movement, I've know that Deaf people (particularly those whose native language is a signed language) have long been infuriated/frustrated by the fascination with teach chimps and other apes sign... as if their native languages are less than fully human.
@@davidharrison7072That is true, but that doesn't take away from the original commenters point that whatever communication systems animals have, they could be radically different from our own. To answer the question whether animal have language, we first have to clarify what we mean by language, and if our idea of language is "speaking just like humans do", then the answer is obviously no. If they could do that, we could speak to them.
So we change the question to "Can animals grammar", and our search becomes a lot more interesting - because the main component of grammar is not "speaking like humans do", it is having smaller combinable units that carry meaning ordered in a systematic law-like way, or something along those lines. It is very much not producing words with your mouth, or understanding them with your ears. If we do want to find non-human grammar out there, we have to consider that animals can produce meaning differently, and we will have to analyze their animal-specific meaning-making-systems to judge whether they qualify as grammar. Which might of course produce vague results, because our definition of grammar is strongly tied to human language; but that does not have to stop us from making interesting findings. I have been told recently that music also has grammar like structures, even though its function is arguably very different from that of language. So, overall, I do think that Anthropocentrism will only hold us back with this research topic.
Yep. We take a sample set of 1 (us humans) and expect any other living being to compare to that standard, which is ridiculous. Most beings have ways to communicate. That doesn't mean they're in any way comparable to the way we do.
This isn't about communication. This is about language. They're not the same thing.
wow, yet another really amazingly produced and researched video! I love how succinct this series is, despite being spread over multiple videos
"Glassk."
Apollo
Apollo does that to just play around with phonemes and mess with his owners on purpose (as parrots are wont to do). His job is to learn words and concepts rather than a grammar. Even with Alex, which is what inspired Apollo, he never used grammatical sentences. The most complex Alex got was "wanna go back" (he's done for the day, he would like to be put back in his cage for a break, thank you very much) and "what color am i?"
@slook7094 I'm not saying that he learned grammar. I'm just commenting something I think is funny.
Earn a pisnack?
Shrock
Bogos binted?
I'm so hyped for all the video's in this series! As a linguistics student, it's fun to learn about the history of this small field
I'm still wainting for a video on the other missing romance languages since we had the African Romance video. Specially in Ilyria!
Was this project fully abandoned? Or perhaps we could see more of it in the future?
Disappointed to not see Nim's longest sentence highlighted here. It sparks so much joy, unless you think Apes can talk like humans.
This "Wild Grammar" is what I'm really interested in, ofc if other animals have grammar it wouldn't work like human grammar!
That grammar is so simple that it's not considered language.
Tbh, one of my favorite examples of language is the conlang where you "write" by drilling holes into a rock via tentacles. It's called "Gurgle".
Thanks for all your great, well researched videos that are free of exaggeration and nonsense.
Have a great week!
Your dedication is commendable. Thank you.
Poor Hans. He was just doin’ his best.
pretty excited to hear about bunny the dog and coco the gorilla.
It's always a fantastic day when you bring us a new video 🎉👏
To be clear, most human successes also can be called "tricks, often performed for treats" (4:50). "Commands, wants and needs" is the first level of communication... the beginnings of grammar, not evidence of its lack. However, yes, other than with great apes, it doesn't even make sense to TRY to teach them human thought processes. It's better to work with their existing thought process, so you have a good framework for what's feasible (for example, connected sequences will be more feasible for some species... others, not so much). I hooe my lack of good grammar isn't too distracting😂
Fascinating!
Kiitos paljon!
3:31
I never new chimps were so good at making me laugh
Incredible as always!! Love this channel so much
I was reading The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker and he mentioned these cases and couple more and he explained the most effective criticisms against these ideas. Many other researcher were a lot less ethical, controlling acces to the animals and not keeping proper notes and observations.
NativLang uploaded a new video and it only has 26k view? The algorithm is doing you dirty
One of the apes at kanzi's center drew the symbol for Outside one day when it had been raining a lot so no one had been playing outside
Trying to learn the language of another species seems intimidating, even if it was humans dealing with aliens. Shouldn’t raise our hopes *too* high for animals.
This should have been part of the last video.
loving this series
NativLang is my favourite grammanimal! :-)
Excited for the next episode :D
There is a scholar in Japan who studies titmice, titmice have language he proved it. They talk more than monkeys. They mainly use six words: pipipi for hawk, jijiji for gather, tupii for stay close, jajaja for snake, tilili for hungry, pitupi for alert, and so on. We talk about these together. For example, jajaja pitupi means watch out for snakes.
Have there been any studies to show this?
@downsjmmyjones101 Yes, there is. There is an experimental video. He experimented with how titmice react to different sounds.
When he made a "jajaja" sound and showed a branch, the titmice would approach the branch looking for the snake. This behavior is intended to locate the snake and inform their friends. However, when he made a "tupii" sound, the tits did not approach the branch at all.
Just because they have sounds for different things doesn't mean that they Grammer though.
As always, amazing work done!
Interestingly, there's a project collecting all of the gestures used for communication by non-human Great Apes. Chimps and Bonobos and gorillas and orangutans _do_ use a form of "sign language", but it's not a human one and it's rather simple in its grammar.
I think the pdoblem is the simplicity. Scientists are wondering if animals are capable of complex grammar.
@@downsjmmyjones101 Here's why "complex grammar" is such a big deal: it's _productive._
When a feature of a language is described as, "productive," it means that it allows you to extend the language to brand new concepts that don't yet exist.
As an example, I like to bring up the very productive German verb prefix, „zer-“. That prefix denotes connotations of, "…to the point of destruction." And it's not coincidence that the German verbs meaning, "to crush," "to smash," "to shatter," "to crush," "to disintegrate," and yes, "to destroy," all begin with the prefix, „zer-“. But you can put it onto other verbs. Consider „schneiden“, to cut. „zerschneiden“, then, would mean to cut into small pieces that there no way of reassembling. „kochen“==to cook or go boil. „zerkochen“ means to boil to death or to cook into inedibility. And you can append it onto "to sing": „zersingen“ == to sing so horribly, you've basically destroyed the song!
The ability to use productive features of a language is something that, so far, appears to be uniquely human. And determining what separates us from other animals without being arrogant or presumptive is an important area of research.
@@John_Weiss I zerscheißen my pants
@@drakep271 „zerscheißen“ would be the infinitive. Gotta conjugate those German verbs correctly! [„ich zerscheiße…“]
Although you do need to be careful, because „zer-“ plus some verbs already have a meaning, one that doesn't exactly match what you'd expect. Like, for example: „zerbauen“==„zer-“+„bauen“ doesn't mean, "To build so badly it falls apart." It already exists and means, "To dismantle," i.e. the opposite of building something. So it's always worthwhile to check the Duden to see if Germans have already been slapping „zer-“ onto a verb and have given it a meaning of its own.
I'm always reminded of the Chinese Room thought experiment. Even if they could theoretically reproduce perfect English, that wouldn't necessarily mean they UNDERSTAND the language like we do.
WhatAboutBunny? The dog using buttons
What about it?
I ran across a UA-cam channel that has lessons on how to talk to and with CATS. 😮 I'm no expert... But anecdotally I've been amazed at the responses (actions and verbal) of our cats.
I've been a Coco fan since her first appearance on PBS BITD. There's a video on here that uses the word Ooftonium (I think) that says she absolutely 💯 could NOT communicate in sign language. I've never been able to watch it all. 😢
The problem is that the main humans who worked with her … all of them hearing … would interpret her signs using _homophones._ For example, using the sign for "bee" to mean "to be". _Which doesn't work in sign language, where "sounds like" isn't a concept._
And when deaf people tried to tell the researchers they were both using sign wrong and not teaching it to Coco correctly, they were ignored.
I think Coco could communicate, just not to the extent but in the way that her handlers thought.
So, this is purely anecdotal and unfalsifiable but, my first cat actually made a sign language type thing in her own way. Of course there was only one sign. The gesture meant “I want to go outside.” And the gesture she used was pawing at the door knob as if to open it. Personally I find that she proves that some cats can comprehend very basic symbolic gestures. Of course this gesture was reinforced whenever she got let outside but that’s its own thing.
The thing I am trying to say is that somehow she made a basic connection between an action humans did and what it achieved and thought to mimic that motion perhaps if only to see if it would also let her out. Then we reinforced the connection between the gesture and what it was meant to communicate by letting her out.
It's easy to confuse communication with language. Communication is a lot easier than you'd realize: horses and dogs in particular are very easy to communicate with, especially if they're well-trained. They can often understand commands and gestures of various types, and it's definitely possible to perceive a complex emotional reality in them. But that's not generally how we define language.
I know my cat is happy if his tail is standing tall, much in the same way I know that someone is happy with me by how they act. We actually know quite a bit about housecats' methods of signalling their humans. But a smile isn't language, nor is it slow blinking. Language, and especially grammar, is about words and syntax. It's possible that cats have language,
But honestly, what probably happened is that your cat knows how your door works, but has also realized it's easier to get you to work the mechanism, because door knobs are difficult for a cat leg to handle. Frankly, if that was the only "sign" you recall, you probably weren't very familiar with how cats communicate. There are a *lot* of signals that you can learn (some of which are frustratingly counter-intuitive, like staring being interpreted as hostility or challenge).
@@Duiker36 you have decent points. Keep in mind this was years ago. I have another cat who I’m also quite attuned to. The one bit of cat communication that I have known for a while is that if a cat’s tail is wagging they’re about done with you. I’m also aware of and use other ways cats communicate. I was just pointing out a very interesting form of communication that I now know I mistook as language. And even with that same cat we could communicate effectively beyond that gesture.
And one more thing regarding cat communication. Regarding staring you are right that you shouldn’t hold eye contact for too long. But there is a relaxed form of staring and a threatening form of staring. If a cat’s eyes are relaxed while they’re staring at you that means in the broadest sense that they are not trying to communicate dominance. Of course you should break up eye contact and slow blink frequently when this happens.
Amazing class
I will never stop being irrationally angry at the human illustrations on this channel
I actually think AI could help decode animal grammar *strictly in the sense* that understanding how different computer models structure and map signals into grammar structures could give us more insight into how animals do it too.
I mean, if you start with the assumption that animals do it, it makes it a lot easier to fill in the gap with nonsense. That's how it goes when you start with a conclusion and then generate data to explain it.
@@Duiker36 I'm starting with the observation that many animals appear to be able to communicate and relay information that is more complex than mere call-and-response, and I hypothesize that they must have some underlying system of logic that they use to communicate, regardless of whether it makes sense as language to us.
When my wife mentions "bath" around our dog, he comes over to me because he knows what bath means. I say that, Because if she says treat, or "prize" he doesn't come over to me to save him. Instead, he turns around in circles for "yes" of sorts.
There was a super lengthy video that Soup Emporium made a few years back on Koko the Gorilla's (in)ability to sign. There was a *significant* portion of that video dedicated to the complexities of sign language (how deaf babies sign the same way hearing babies babble, deaf people who have strokes show similar impairments with signing the way hearing people have speech impediments, etc), and how the researchers attempting simian signing experiments basically took ASL signs and stapled them together with English grammar. In other words, the researchers themselves had no idea how sign language worked.
Loving this ❤
WHEN WILL YOU MAKE VIDEO ABOUT THE AMPERSAND?!?!?!
Bbbbbbut...what about Mr Ed?!! I've witnessed it!!
A horse is a horse of course
Of course!
Uv korss
From my own experience talking to animals, I think too many humans get over analyitical in their thinking of animal communication. Animals do not usually dumb down their native languages for humans to understand, and need to be taken as a whole rather than a sum of parts, the same way adult human language or poetryvis used. Wild animals typically have better communication skills than domestic ones, and certain members of species seem to know local human langauges, especially in urban enviroments. Naturally, older members of animal species seem more adept at both their own langauge, and interpreting others. A controlled enviroment is not the wayvto learn animal communication. How readily would you be willing to open up to your captors? How well would you speak if you had never met any other humans or only a handful of other prisioners? In situations where your power is stripped, feining stupidity is incredibly helpful. Anyone whos worked a minimun wage job, or been part of a discriminated class of human will understand this tactic.
Many wild animals will try to communicate with humans. think of times you may have seen an animal and it "looks like he is mad" or " looks like he is saying X" well, they most likely are.
Okay, they can't talk; but they're good listeners.
The teachers never seem to try teaching grammar, only words. Perhaps that is why they only learn words, not grammars?
What about Chantek? He invented his own compound words and protested his innocence when told he was in trouble for hurting someone.
Have there been any confirmations by researchers of Chantek using language?
It's very easy for humans to fool themselves when it comes to interpreting animal behavior.
@@downsjmmyjones101Were they ever allowed to? Chantek knew basic American sign language and understood how money works. His photo was even included in the university's year book. At age 9 he was incarcerated for 11 years, officially because he was accused of harassment but it's well-known that certain powerful figures in the university wanted him gone because they held religious beliefs about how animals' inability to use language is evidence that they have no soul. After he was eventually moved into a zoo, he referred to the other apes as "orange dogs", a description he invented himself. He repeatedly asked to be released so he could go back home. Anyone familiar with ASL could communicate with him. To deny he understood language would require denying that sign language is a language at all.
@@Ggdivhjkjl Then it sounds like there's as much evidence for Chantek using language as there is that magic is real.
You tellin me Mr. Ed was a fraud THIS WHOLE TIME?
No but Lucy is our great grand grammar.
why would an animal who just wants something from their caretakers need to want to ask 'complex questions' or state 'complex declarative sentences' anyhow? Perhaps this disinclination is a cognitive limitation but is it a communicative one? I mean, if one simply wants a banana from that communication exchange, why grammar much beyond that?
It's not really complex questions, but questions full stop. AFAIK no ape has ever asked a genuine question. Only alex asked one question, once. Seeing as 4 year olds do nothing but ask questions all day, I suspect there is a deep difference
winnie the pooh never disappointed me 🐻
Ok but why is grammar the only thing were focusing on
My cat says "wow" when he wants to be petted. He sats "aaaaam" when he wants "ham" (what we call wet food) why do we need grammar on top of vocabulary to acknowledge that animals can communicate to us and mean it?
interesting
And perhaps "can animals grammar" is the wrong question.
Let's _not_ set human grammar as a "standard" with all failing to "meet" those human concepts of grammar as "non communication."
That seems like an all too rigid conception of what it means to communicate.
Removing ourselves from the equation and learning, interpreting, and applying other species meanings and conveyed information wpuld be a way to do this.
Also, is "grammar" a necessary "benchmark," or does it just help _us_ as humans order the meanings of other animal communications for us to seemingly understand (or not)?
Voice audio is a bit too low in this one, especially with the music being at a normal volume.
Thanks for saying so. I kept messing with it; values and waveforms looked right, but something felt off. Going to readjust this when I put it all together.
@@NativLang I don't do editing, but when I went to film school they taught us -12 dB for dialogue and -20 dB for music.
What about THEIR language. Why do we know so little about it?
Ok, next time.
From a purely survival and evolutionary basis, I don't see any reason why animals would ever have any use for our human grammars/languages. Our languages/grammars are even now continuously evolving as they have the entire time that we humans have used them. The main ways I can think of that precise use of grammar & language is essential is when communicating technical/scientific things or things of a social/emotional/political nature(political not necessarily meaning of the government).
I think Bonobos are the most like us socially, but many of the things they do commonly we now consider sex crimes. 😅
Which raises the obvious question of why humans developed human grammars/languages. Why couldn't we get by on basic signals like waving our arms or making strange mouth sounds? What made us different? There are plenty of tool-using animals, and plenty of socially-complex animals, so why don't they have language, if they don't?
@@Duiker36 Most animals don't have the vocal cords that humans do; even our nearest genetic relatives.
Human have gotten by using basic hand signals for millenia and strange mouth sounds ARE language that a group of people has agreed upon to communicate amongst themselves. Africa has NEW languages being made all the time even now which might seem like that to some, but they're usually related to other existing languages in the region.
Humans, eventually at least, like one upping one another and we like fighting for what another has access to. Animals also fight for territory, which has food or other resources, like us, but they've never evolved enough to make it as strategic as humans have(back to that continuous one upping each other part). The other part is we like to distance ourselves from other we're ignorant of by declaring that they are "Them" and not of "Us". That creates wars of theologies, ideals, interpretations of theologies(typically now seen amongst the Muslim peoples and even Christian peoples, e.g. Afghanistan & Ukrainian wars) , and civil wars. Many times all of the above.
In short, humans are just the most societally complex creatures and have taken biological aspects from many other "lesser" lifeforms. That's why our communication is so complex. 😅
Are we all not also just following clues?
Common human theme: teach other animals to talk like us intaed of trying to understand them.
Animal ''grammar'' may just be body language, for horses anyway.
I wonder if birds of different species understand each other, I’m guessing not… Just as humans don’t.
you are a brilliant scholar sir, both for your search for factual truth, and for discarding false ideas.
It's just so fundamentally wrongheaded to try to get another species to communicate on our terms, it's extreme anthropomorphism. Every species has its own method of communication that's perfectly suited to its needs, having evolved over millions of years. Of course it would be much more valuable to study animal communication on its own terms rather than ours.
The scientists aren't trying to see if animals can communicate. They're trying to see if they can learn language.
@@downsjmmyjones101 Right, but that's still imposing a human construct on other species. They were trying to see if they could learn _human_ language, which the scientific community thankfully realized eventually was wrongheaded and ethically questionable.
@@valmarsiglia What other non-human languages are there? What features do they have or not have that human language has?
@@downsjmmyjones101 I'm not an expert by any means, but as I understand it, people who research such things make a distinction between systems of communication in animal species vs language proper, which is an entirely human phenomenon. I think one of the real dividing lines is the ability to express thoughts about past, future, or hypothetical events through grammar.
@@valmarsiglia How are we supposed to tell if human language is unsuitable for animals or all language is unsuitable if we can't test a non-human language?
What's the alternative course of action?
Give us new episode broooo
What about Koko, the gorilla who reportedly recognised over 2,000 spoken English words, and could communicate using 1,000 American Sign Language words?
a video on why koko probably couldn't talk: ua-cam.com/video/e7wFotDKEF4/v-deo.html
Extremely questionable and largely considered equivalent to Nim in the greater scientific community. Not only does her trainer go to great lengths to perpetuate that she signs better and more complex language than she does, but actual native sign language speakers have written critiques about a huge portion of kokos sign language being actually incoherent, but creatively interpreted as valid signs anyways by 'researchers' and her caretaker who actually aren't very well versed in sign language.
Her last goodbye and her time with Robin Williams are particularly elucidating. They really just make up whole cloth entire portions of what she 'apparently' is saying, or just constantly distract when she says absolutely nothing intelligible with her sign.
And if you look deep enough, you start asking why Koko got so many new cats so often, and why her female trainers were encouraged to let her play with their nipples. Just incredibly questionable all around.
I have the volume on my phone cranked up to the top and cast through Alexa, and I’m getting a headache trying to hear.
Your volume is too low.
👍
It's interesting that now we do have entities which can create coherent sentences, but they do not always do so logically. I asked ChatGPT if, given 3 women and 3 men on a desert island were able to without any external assistance, produce 3 babies within 11 months, how long it would take 2 women and no men to produce 1 baby.
It's answer, in well-formatted LaTeX I might add, and without explaining it's assumptions, was to confidently declare that 2 women could produce a single baby in 3.67 months without the assistance of any men. An answer so obviously wrong that no human would even consider it.
When asked to explain, it stated many of the complexities that allow for variance in the human gestational period, which would be fine, had it not neglected the core issues that the time is wildly shorter than the human gestation period, and conception without a male genetic donor or high tech lab equipment would be impossible regardless. That is, it is an entity which can speak in coherent sentences but for which common sense logical issues with meaning are only partially important. Issues that it itself is aware of but which it doesn't always consider.
Do a video of ğ in turkish pls
#timelineofmankind project (16500 rows) thanks you.
In the thumbnail, why does the women with glasses on have eyebrows both inside the boundaries of the frames and in the area outside the area of the frames? It doesn't make sense.
Isn't how children learn language also just a version of the mirroring that the animals were doing?
Children quickly come to understand the rules of grammar and can use it regularly, even with novel or nonsense words. They can even develop grammar largely by themselves, as the famous case of the (Nicaraguan, i think?) school for the deaf showed. Animals have never been shown to understand how grammar works or be able to regularly use it.
😊
I'm far more disappointed with various talking human beings, ;)
The audio is a bit too quiet, the commentary especially.
Codwch, fy annwylyd, mae NativLang wedi uwchlwytho fideo newydd am anifeiliaid sy'n siarad😳
I like the channel Billi speaks. She is a kitty that speaks. With those buttons that people get to communicate with pets.
She's smart. And has a large vocabulary. No complex sentences, but. Well. I watch it because it's adorable. And it is. Also undeniably smart. But, for the sake of what was talked about in the video. Not grammar.
Useful too. My friends cat is really good at telling her what she wants. But. Well. Billi is on another level on that.
Human style grammar is not essential to communication. Animals have other ways.
No investigation of the marvelous Koko?
Should animals grammar?
Whether or not other species have, use, or can learn human language grammar is, to me, somewhat unnecessary and irrelevant. It's the wrong question.
I'll remind here that while humans can "train" other species to respond to our commands (demands), there is yet to be an example of the exact reverse. It's so far a one-way communication.
Other species have learned more about our communications and use of our communication forms to convey information to us, however.
They have essentially learned rudimentary communication in a "foreign" (another species) language - something humans have not succeeded doing.
How so? Do hunters not use animal scents and calls to communicate with animals?
@downsjmmyjones101 No, they aren't communicating with animals at all.
A human can track a lion's movements just as a lion can track a human's movements. That's covert observation, not communication.
What's your point, exactly?
@@EyeSeeThruYou I'm not talking about tracking. I'm talking about calls and scents.
@downsjmmyjones101 Right, because what you described is part of tracking, reason irrelevant.
Spraying scents or making sounds may attract attention, prompting another species to investigate.
I rather much see this analogous to someone foolishly splashing around in a Florida river, attracting an alligator's notice.
We know what comes next, and that's not communication, is it?
None of that constitutes communication, where two parties are attempting to convey information to each other or from reach other.
@@EyeSeeThruYou Just because it's part of tracking doesn't mean it's not communication.
Why do scents and calls attract attention?
Do gators splash to communicate with each other?
We as humans have such a tendency to dismiss animals in literally every way smh
What do you mean?
Is that a bad thing?
yay
yo a new video!!
bad audio
instead of teaching english to animals you'd think that humans would be smart enough to learn the nonverbal cues that animals give to indicate their needs and expressions. The animals can pick up on cues, but we cant? cmon. I think bout this with button dogs whataboutbunny like just get to know your dog psychology and pay attention...tf
Humans have learned the nonverbal cues of animals. Ever seen dog trainers explain tail and ear positions?
@@downsjmmyjones101 that's exactly what I'm saying. there's no need to teach your dog to press buttons, you yourself can go read a book.
@@sweet_iris The reason people are trying to see if non-humans can learn language is because we want to see if we're the only ones capable of language.
@@downsjmmyjones101 👍
23rd
Human language is human specific, other animals, if they have something that can be described as language, will have their own species specific system and it won't be like ours.
4h ago